FEDERAL WAY, WASH. ? A 17-year-old Washington state grocery bagger was ready to wash his hands in the bathroom at the supermarket where he works when he saw a brown canvas money bag on the floor.

Moisei Baraniuc opened it and saw envelopes filled with money — adding up to $10,000.

Stuffed with 50- and hundred-dollar bills, the bag contained the life savings of a Vancouver, Wash., man who accidentally left it in the men’s bathroom at the Top Food & Drug in Federal Way on Nov. 13.

Baraniuc, a senior at Todd Beamer High School in Federal Way, put the bag on the counter and washed his hands while he thought. “The first thing that went through my mind was keeping it,” he said.

And then the Ukrainian immigrant remembered what his father, Vitalie Baraniuc, says at dinner at the family’s home. “My dad is always telling us in this life you’ve got to work for yourself,” said Baraniuc, who goes by the nickname Moses. “If you take what doesn’t belong to you, it will catch up to you.”

Instead what caught up with him was the man who lost the money, Fred W. Smith, who paid a visit to the supermarket Wednesday evening.

Smith couldn’t be reached to comment. But Baraniuc said that Smith walked into the store looking for him at 7:30 p.m. Wednesday. The man thanked the teen and took down his address.

“I’ll send you a little reward,” Smith told him.