Bedford PD Help Woman Find $1,000 She Lost In The Woods

BEDFORD, MA — A Lexington woman was sure she had lost close to $1,000 in the woods in Bedford until Bedford police gave her call. A good samaritan found the wad of cash and other items the woman dropped and brought it to police — as it turns out, the woman knew the good samaritan and met him in those very woods, a year earlier.

Karen Einstein was walking through the Old Bedford Reservoir Park on Feb. 6 on her way to the bank with about $1,000 cash when she dropped it.

“It was a perfect storm, and I was already very stressed even before losing the money,” Einstein said. “One of my housemates had given me cash for his share of the rent, and I was on the way to the bank to deposit it. When I lost it, I just felt so awful.”

Einstein went to bed that night thinking the money was gone, but the next day Bedford resident Steve Kissel brought the money to the police station — he had tried to track down the owner with no luck and left the job to police.

After returning the money and items to Einstein, police arranged a call between Einstein and Kissel so that she could properly thank him. It didn't take long into the call before the two realized that they had met before, one year earlier, near the very same spot where the money was found.

“As we were talking, I realized that I had met Karen before,” Kissel said. “We had been walking in those very same woods around this time last year. We had a very powerful conversation.”

Both Kissel and Einstein were experiencing grief after the deaths of loved ones last year, Kissel his mother and Einstein her fiance, and bonded over the experience.

“The conversation meant a lot, but then we went our separate ways,” Einstein said. “For us to be reunited like this, it’s just incredible. From my conversation with Steve last year to all the work he did returning the money, it all comes back to people helping others through extremely difficult situations.”

Einstein said the Bedford Police were also extremely helpful during the entire process.

“From the very beginning they put my mind at ease,” Einstein said. “I would like to thank Sgt. Craig Naylor, Officer Robert Abajian and everyone at the Bedford Police Department. Those woods mean everything to me and losing the money the way I did was terrible, but I’m just so grateful. With everything that goes on in the world it can be easy to give up, but this really restored my faith in humanity.”

Einstein said she offered Kissel a reward for his honesty, but he did not accept any money.

“I’m a lover of the classics, and Greek philosophy teaches that virtue is its own reward,” Kissel said. “I knew I had to make a choice whether or not to turn the money into the police, and believe I made the right one.”

"It's quite a coincidence that Karen and Steve had met once before in the woods, and we are glad everything worked out the way it did," Chief Bongiorno said. "This ended up being a very positive situation for all parties involved."