Get it?

With Tonya Sams

CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Michael May thought that almost a year's worth of savings were gone with the wind when he left the money in a pouch on top of his car Saturday night and drove off.
"I felt so stupid," he said in an interview Thursday. "It was more than $3,600 -- eight months of tips -- that was gone. What was I going to tell my wife?"
Luckily for May, David Hamilton, a safety ambassador for the Downtown Cleveland Alliance, saw the bag lying in the street and wrestled it away from a homeless man who had picked it up.
Hamilton went back to the Alliance office, found team leader Glenn Hudson, and they counted the money. They turned it over to police, who called May with the news just hours after the loss.
Police knew how to contact May through bank receipts and checkbooks in the bag.
"It's a miracle," May said. "I was almost in tears after I lost the bag. I had planned on using that money to catch up on bills and take a little vacation. It's amazing that these men were right there at the time and saved the money. It's great to know there are honest people in the world."
May, 45, said he will give a reward to Hamilton and Hudson. The Downtown Cleveland Alliance is a not-for-profit organization dedicated to keeping downtown safe and clean.
Hamilton, 50, of Cleveland, will also be honored at a Cleveland Police Department Third District recognition ceremony Wednesday.
"It's all right," Hamilton said of being honored. "But I got my recognition when I gave the money back."
Hamilton, an Alliance employee since May, and Hudson, 42, of Cleveland, an employee for nearly a year, knew they had to turn the money in to police.
"We, being human, did discuss the possible outcome if we kept it," Hudson said, chuckling. "But David said, 'I may not be the best Christian but I'm still a Christian and we have to turn the money in.' "
Added Hamilton: "We found his checkbooks. We had to give it back to him."
May works part time as a bartender at the Hilton Garden Inn on Carnegie Avenue. He left work at 11:15 p.m. He placed a zippered cloth bag that contained his accumulated tips, his bank book and other items on top of the car as he opened the door.
Then he got in and drove away. He saw another driver trying to signal him, but May didn't know what he wanted.
When he got to his house on the West Side, he realized what he had done. He said he got that sick, "lost wallet" feeling.
"I drove back and retraced my steps," said May, whose full-time job is in Willoughby at CMC Precision Grinding. "I spent 90 minutes going up and down the streets looking for the bag, but didn't find it. I went home around 1:30 and was trying to figure out how to tell my wife I lost the money, when I got a call from the Third District police station."
A police officer asked May if he had lost anything. He told her the amount of money and that with it were his checkbook and two sets of Browns tickets.
He picked up the bag at 3 a.m.
May said he has learned his lesson and will deposit his tips every week from how on.
He is also amazed at how well everything worked out.
"These days, with things the way they are, how many people are honest enough to turn in this amount of money they find?" he said. "I am lucky that the two men who found it are honest people."
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: msangiacomo@plaind.com, 216-999-4890
Related topics: david hamilton, glenn hudson, lost money, michael may