LIRR workers return backpack containing $12,000 that woman left on train

It would have been a one-way trip to financial ruin for Juliet Barton.

But, luckily for the Far Rockaway, Queens, resident, Long Island Rail Road employees found the backpack she left behind on a Babylon branch train Monday and got it back to her with its contents intact. The contents: $12,000 in cash.

“I was so grateful,” said Barton, who was reunited at the LIRR's headquarters in Jamaica, Queens, on Thursday with the team of railroad employees that rallied to track down and return the money to the distraught passenger. Barton, who said the money accounted for much of her life savings, described the workers as the “best in Long Island . . . not because of the money, but because of what they did.”

Barton boarded a westbound train in Babylon on Monday, transferred trains at Freeport, and got off at Rockville Centre, she said. “That’s when I realized, ‘I don’t have my bag,’” Barton said.

At the direction of an LIRR employee, Barton, whose age was unavailable, according to the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, headed to the railroad’s lost and found office at Penn Station, where she filled out some paperwork about her lost backpack. “And then I went back home. I didn’t tell them about the money yet,” Barton said.

After spending the night praying, Barton returned to Penn Station on Tuesday morning and disclosed to LIRR senior terminal manager John Persico what was inside the bag.

“I said . . . ‘Did you know that I left $12,000 in there?’” recalled Barton, who said only that she was traveling with the money because she wanted to “protect” it. “He looked at me so concerned. Right away, I feel that love — like, he’s going to help me now.”

MTA workers took stock of all the bags that had been lost in the LIRR system Monday and traced one back to the same train Barton boarded in Babylon a day earlier. A worker emerged with her backpack, which had been found and turned in by the train’s conductor.

“Not a single dollar was missing,” MTA chairman and chief executive Janno Lieber said Thursday, as he issued commendations to five workers, who “showed kindness and concern when faced with a passenger who was going through that kind of stressful situation.”

By Alfonso A. Castillo

alfonso.castillo@newsday.com@alfonsoreports

Alfonso Castillo has been reporting for Newsday since 1999 and covering the transportation beat since 2008. He grew up in the Bronx and Queens and now lives in Valley Stream with his wife and two sons.