East Greenbush, N.Y.

A Times Union story about a Walmart employee fired from his job for redeeming $5.10 worth of empty cans and bottles he found discarded in the parking lot sparked widespread outrage and is gaining traction nationally via social media.

Dounya Hamdam of Chicago read the story from a link on Instagram and started a GoFundMe crowd-funding site with a goal of $20,000 for the fired employee. To donate, go to gofund.me/ewb4c9yk

Tom Lomascolo, a landscaper in Mooresville, N.C., read the story on Facebook and said he intended to send the man a check for $510.

Local readers wrote and called the Times Union to express their anger at Walmart and vowed to boycott the store and to send the fired worker donations. An Altamont woman fired off a letter of indignation to C. Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart.

Checks can be sent for Thomas Smith c/o The Center for Law and Justice, 220 Green St., Albany, NY 12202.

This groundswell of civic action was touched off by a Times Union story Thursday about Smith, 52, who liked his job gathering shopping carts from the vast parking lot of the Walmart Supercenter here, where customers often left trash and empty drink containers.

Smith picked up the garbage for more than two months until Nov. 6, when he was fired for redeeming $5.10 worth of empty cans and bottles he found discarded on two occasions.

He was called into the security office and interrogated by a manager and two security staff members.

"I didn't know you couldn't take empties left behind. They were garbage," Smith said. "I didn't even get a chance to explain myself. They told me to turn in my badge."

Surveillance cameras caught Smith redeeming the empty bottles and cans at the store, tantamount to theft of Walmart property, according to the manager.

Smith said he was never informed about that rule.

Smith was fired three hours after the normal end of his shift. He had agreed to work extra time that Friday when the store was short of employees.

The manager asked Smith to repay the $5.10, but he didn't have any cash on him. He took a one-hour bus ride from Albany and paid the money back to the manager on Sunday.

"I did the right thing and stayed out of trouble. I worked hard and did a good job. I ended up getting a raw deal," said Smith, who is on parole after being released from prison in May. He served a 15-year sentence for a 2002 armed robbery of a KeyBank on Route 9 in Latham. The father of two said he robbed the bank to pay for a heroin and cocaine habit.

The manager, Heather, who would not give her last name, refused to speak to a Times Union reporter at the store Wednesday.

"We can't comment on human resource matters," said Aaron Mullins, a spokesman at Walmart's corporate headquarters in Bentonville, Ark. He said Smith was fired after an internal investigation and human resource review, but declined to elaborate.

Smith was fired from his $9-an-hour job a few weeks before his 90-day probationary period was up, denying him a 10 percent employee discount and other benefits.

Smith, who is African-American, contacted prisoner advocate Alice Green at the Center for Law and Justice in Albany. She took up Smith's cause after hearing his account that alleged racial discrimination. During his interrogation, the manager told Smith that a store cashier, who is white, was caught on camera stealing $20 from a cash register and stuffing it into her bra. The cashier paid the money back and was not terminated because she has five kids.

"It raised issues of race and gender," Green said.

Green and a staff attorney tried to contact Walmart managers, but none would listen to their concerns or their appeal to get Smith reinstated to his job.

"It made me angry because this defeats everything we've been working for over the past 30 years," said Green, whose organization helps former inmates find employment.

Smith had been homeless for four months before he sought help from the Homeless and Travelers Aid Society, which pays his rent in a Central Avenue rooming house. He worries about not being able to buy Christmas presents for his two teenage children.

Natalie McDuffie, of Troy, commiserated with Smith about his firing as she pushed shopping carts across the parking lot Wednesday.

"He was a good employee and did what he was supposed to do," she said.

Smith is considering a lawsuit.

"This is an injustice," he said. "I was done dirty."

pgrondahl@timesunion.com • 518-454-5623 • @PaulGrondahl