Honest cleaner returns $20k jewellery found in Bugis Junction toilet

A 67-year-old cleaner found jewellery amounting to almost S$20,000 in a toilet at Bugis Junction and returned them. 

The incident happened on Thursday (May 18) at around 9am, reports Shin Min Daily News via Lianhe Zaobao. 

The 36-year-old man who misplaced the jewelry told reporters that he was simply taking care of the items at the request of a friend, and had intended to return them, thus placing them in a bag which he had brought along to work.

However, he accidentally left them in a toilet in on the basement level 1 of Bugis Junction instead. 

Said the man: "I had a meeting before meeting that friend.

“I didn’t realise that I misplaced the bag until during the meeting. I immediately rushed back to the toilet at Bugis Junction."

The man panicked when he could not find any traces of the white bag.

He only breathed a sigh of relief when he met the cleaner who told him that he had found the bag he was looking for.

The man added: "The cleaner told me that after he discovered the bag, he kept it in a storage cabinet.

"After verifying that I was the man who lost it, he returned the bag to me.

"The jewellery inside were worth more than S$20K and had sentimental value, so I was really lucky to have met him.”

When asked about the incident, the cleaner said that he had placed the bag in a storage cabinet after finding it in the toilet.

He had planned to hand it over the management after he finished his shift. 

The honest elder said: "He seemed to be looking for something he had lost.  

"I thought that he could have been the one who misplaced the bag.

"I did not check the contents of the bag so I did not know it was this expensive."

The cleaner also said that this was a common occurrence: people leaving behind items, and he would usually hand the items over to the management. 

He said:

"I don’t keep items that don’t belong to me.

"This is my principle."

The man who misplaced the bag said that he was touched and very grateful to the cleaner.

He added that such honesty is a important quality and increasingly rare in the society of today. 

After the incident, he wrote a letter thanking Bugis Junction for its help in the matter. 

He also presented a small gift and card to the cleaner.