People noticed the plastic bags in the middle of North Salina Street that weary way they discover another obligation on a busy day. More garbage to pick up on the corner of a street with lots of garbage and sad old brick buildings: a strip club, an antique store and a barbershop.

There were 14 murky plastic bags near Wolf and North Salina streets May 29, a Friday. The trail started at the sewer grate, where one bag was wedged, and ended at a sandwich board sign advertising lap dance specials at Night Lights.

But it wasn't garbage.

The bags were full of money: $328,000 in 14 bags. In the middle of the street.

It was heaven-sent in a poor part of the city where jobs were scarce even before the economy tanked.

To hold those bags full of hundred dollar bills was to hold possibility. To be forced to make a decision.

The antique store owner, the construction worker, the barber and the landscaper all held those bags and pressed them flat to see the money inside. They saw vacations, bills paid off, a chance for college, a few nice things.

Then they all made a choice.The antique store owner

Police say it was an accident.

The 14 bags containing $328,000 slid from the back of a Brinks truck on its way from Carousel Center to the Syracuse headquarters of Brinks on Lodi Street. Police reports say the broken door swung open every time the truck turned. Every corner on that half-mile trip was an opportunity to spill cash onto the street.

The two drivers took polygraph tests to make sure they hadn't planned the cash dump. Both passed, according to police reports. They said the side door had been opening on and off throughout the day, but there hadn't seemed to be a problem with the back door.

David Jenks was finishing some grunt work in his shop, the Syracuse Antiques Exchange around 5 p.m. He was sweaty and needed to clean up for a charity event at the shop that night.

He walked down the street to his minivan to get a clean shirt.

On his walk back, Jenks saw the bags.

"I thought, 'Who threw all of that trash in the middle of the street?' I'm always picking up trash around here," said Jenks, whose business has been two storefronts up from the corner for 18 years.

He picked up one of the bags. It was heavier than trash. Jenks could see the bands of hundreds through the plastic. The bags said "Loomis" on the outside, and he could see deposit slips. He counted roughly $80,000, and the slip said the deposit was from Macy's.

To no one, he yelled: "They're full of money!"

Everyone in Cuttin' Up, the barbershop on the corner, heard him. People came running into the street.

Jenks, worried about a riot, tried to keep order as nine or 10 people gathered in the street. He told everyone there was a police officer in his store. (There was. The officer is part of the antique co-op.)

But Jenks thought about taking the money, too. He held the bag of $80,000 for longer than needed. He'd never seen so much money.

He paused. The conversation in his head was full of ifs. If the money had just landed in the street, if it hadn't clearly fallen off a truck, if there hadn't been deposit slips, maybe then it would be OK to keep.

He made his choice.

He grabbed two plastic mail bins that must have fallen off the truck, too, and started asking people to put the money in them.

They carried the bins back to his store where he stuffed the 14 bags into an antique blanket chest until the police could arrive. There was so much money that they had to force the lid shut, to hide the loot from the people filtering through the store for a charity event.

Jenks had a dream he kept the money. He woke up sweating. He still thinks about it -- he wishes he could have opened the bag and smelled it.

But he ended up with at least a little money. Brinks, he said, gave him a cash award. He wouldn't say how much, and Brinks wouldn't return phone calls for this story. In the past, the company has given awards of as much as $10,000 for people who recovered money and jewels that were lost by drivers.



The construction company owner

Hanson Herring was getting his hair cut in the North Salina Street barbershop after he finished work. He owns Barnes and Herring Construction.

He was walking out to his truck when he saw the bags. He thought they were full of garbage, too. He and Jenks headed into the street about the same time.

As Herring got closer, he could see the $100 and $50 bills. Working construction, he's seen a lot of odd things. But this was one of the strangest.

"You have a split second where you think, 'Should I?' " Herring said. "No. It's not worth it. Here -- you can have it back."

Herring, who knows the barbers in the barbershop and the bouncer at the strip club next door, told the people who rushed into the street to put the bags into the bins that landed near them.

Put it here. Put it here. He kept telling them.

"There are a lot of honest people there," Herring said, looking into the full barbershop Wednesday afternoon. Minutes before, a Brinks truck rounded a corner on its way to a heaved asphalt lot a block away on Lodi Street.



The barber

Denvil Hammons was giving someone a haircut when he heard the cry: "There's money in the street!"

Everybody went running. He finished the cut and went running after them.

He didn't stop to ask questions. He ran into the middle of the street, scooped up a bag under his right arm and ran. Fast. To his car.

Everyone kept calling after him. Come back. You can't take that money. Denvil!

Last week, as the 26-year-old rounded out the corners on another cut inside the yellow barbershop, it still made him sick to think about it. "I came back. I was sad, too. About to cry," he said, over the buzz of the razor. He was only half-smiling.

He doesn't know how much money was in the bag. The 2000 Henninger graduate said he would have gone to college with the money. For marketing.

He won't forget what it felt like to hold that much money. To hold possibility. "I wish I went deaf. For real. And kept running," Hammons said, brushing the fallen hairs off a customer's neck.



The landscaper

Peter Eppolito was coming home from a part-time job landscaping. He turned onto North Salina at Wolf Street and had to swerve to avoid the bags in the street.

Eppolito, 29, pulled his car over and picked up one of the bags.

He was alone. The truck had just spilled the money.

There was a big bag. It looked like it might have had $100,000 in it. "I wouldn't have lived with myself if I took something like that," Eppolito says now.

So he took the small bag. It had about $10,000 in it. He knew right from wrong. He knew he shouldn't have done it.

And he knew the money belonged to someone else. He saw it on the news that night.

But it was money in the street. Enough money for some little things. Nothing big.

He paid some bills. He bought a nice pair of sneakers. Nike Air Jordans for about $100.

His good friend needed some money for his mom. So he gave him a thousand or so in wads of $20s.

It wasn't the gift that did Eppolito in. It was the talking.

He told a few friends. Who told a few more at a bar called the Caddyshack, according to police reports.

So when the police came knocking at Eppolito's door in Syracuse June 30, he wasn't surprised.

Police didn't find all of the money. They searched Eppolito's apartment and found $3,260 stuffed in a heating vent and his bathroom vanity. There was another $273 in his wallet.

For all the money he found, Eppolito lost much more.

He is facing charges of third-degree grand larceny, a felony. He borrowed $10,000 from his dad in an attempt to make restitution in court. Police say there's still $50,000 missing. The rest will be difficult to find.

Syracuse police Sgt. Tom Connellan said there are no leads.

Eppolito lost his landscaping job when his boss found out.

He's doing self-imposed community service at his dad's church and hopes that he doesn't end up in prison. A cold night in the Onondaga County Justice Center was enough for him.

Somehow he felt better after he got arrested. The guilt was off his chest.

He always knew how it would end.

"I know right from wrong," Eppolito said.

Marnie Eisenstadt can be reached at meisenstadt@syracuse.com or 470-2246.