TACOMA, Wash. -- An employee who was fired from the Spanaway Walmart for allegedly trying to steal a safe returned to the store days later to try to retrieve what he had left in the safe -- his drugs, the Pierce County Sheriff's Department said Thursday.



"On Sunday morning the fired employee called the Walmart store and said that he was coming in to pick up a safe that he 'forgot' at the store," the sheriff's department said in a report on its Facebook page. "Thinking this was suspicious, loss prevention employees opened the safe that the man had previously attempted to steal from the store ... and inside they discovered a yellow container that held a stash of heroin and Xanax."



Police said that when the fired employee arrived at the Walmart, customer service asked him what was inside it and he told them there was a yellow container that had his "medication" inside; employees called 911.



"When deputies arrived the man started crying; he told the deputies the safe was his, and the yellow container and narcotics were his. He went on to say that he paid $350 for them," the sheriff's department said.



The 24-year-old was booked into the Pierce County Jail for unlawful possession of a controlled substance.