A Portland U.S. Bank employee said she was fired after giving $20 of her own money to a customer who was broke and stranded at a gas station on Christmas Eve.

The man she helped called her firing “ridiculous.”

“I was a customer of U.S. Bank, I needed help, and she went above and beyond,” said Marc Eugenio of Clackamas. “I felt so bad. She was the only one helping me.”

On Dec. 23, Emily James, a senior banker at a U.S. Bank call center in Portland, said she spent more than an hour trying to help Eugenio, a bank customer whose paycheck from a new job had been placed on hold. The hold meant he couldn’t access the funds – just over $1,000 – and was essentially broke before Christmas.

She told Eugenio to visit his Clackamas bank branch in the morning – Christmas Eve – and ask a bank manager to verify the funds from the issuing bank. Eugenio went to his bank and got his boss to verify his employment, but the branch manager was on vacation, and the bank was closing early for the holiday. There was no one, he was told, who could lift the hold.

“(The woman at the bank) said, ‘My hands are tied, I can’t do anything,’ ” he said.

When Eugenio left the bank, he said workers locked the doors behind him.

Frustrated, he again called the U.S. Bank 800 number to speak to the woman who had helped him the day before. He said he was calling from a gas station in Clackamas, unable to even fill his tank.

“I said, ‘I wish I had just $20 bucks to get home,’ ” Eugenio recalled. “And she said ‘Wait, hold on.’”

James handled calls from customers across the country and said it was rare to speak to anyone local. But in this case, Eugenio was just a few miles away.

On Christmas Eve? It seemed like a sign.

She told Eugenio to stay put and that she’d be there within 30 minutes with some gas money.

“I didn’t want her to do it,” he said. “But I’m not proud to the point that I’m going to refuse help.”

James said she got permission from her supervisor to drive out to the 76 gas station at Southeast 122nd Avenue and Sunnyside Road, about 14 miles from her office.

“I handed him $20 in cash, said ‘Merry Christmas’ and went right back to work,” she said.

Eugenio said he thanked her and gave her a hug.

“It was like, ‘Wow, she really cares,” he said. “Most supervisors, maybe they would have tried, but nobody would have ever come out because I was stranded. She had a big heart. She believed what I was saying.”

James finished the rest of her shift that day and again on Monday, Dec. 30.

But on New Year’s Eve, she said, the regional service manager was waiting for her when she arrived at work.

“She said, ‘We’re sorry, we cannot keep your employment,'” James said. The reason, James said, was because of her “unauthorized interaction with a customer.”

“They were worried about my safety,” James said. “He could have kidnapped me or shot me. But I wouldn’t have left or even tried to ask if that was OK if I thought that this person would hurt me.”

The interaction with Eugenio happened in the middle of the day, at around 3:30 p.m., with other people around.

James said her supervisor, who gave her permission to deliver the money, was also fired, though The Oregonian/OregonLive was unable to independently confirm this.

When reached for this story, a spokeswoman with U.S. Bank said the company does not comment on employee matters.

James said she’s never been disciplined on the job, and she provided The Oregonian/OregonLive with more than a dozen certificates, accolades and awards she received over the course of her two years of employment. One of them was a Silver Shield Award in 2018, which says, “We do the right thing. It’s what we believe. It’s how we act. And it’s a core value you’ve recently brought to life through your work.”

Another recognition, from April 2019, was for exemplifying the company’s core value: “We put people first.”

“I just don’t understand why you wouldn’t help someone if you had the ability to,” James said. “It’s Christmas Eve, it’s already a rough time for people, and you’re going to leave someone stranded? I couldn’t in good conscience do that, knowing it was something I could fix, or at least get him home. Had I known then that I was going to be let go, I would have just removed the hold on the check, because that absolutely would have gotten me fired.”

She laughed.

“Hindsight is 20/20.”

Eugenio said he eventually did get the check cleared but not until several days after Christmas. For his kids, ages 9 and 13, he had to leave IOUs under the tree.

“It was one of the saddest Christmases,” he said. “Promissory notes for Christmas gifts. And I can’t believe (James) lost her job over it. The only one who seemed to care was Emily, and she got fired for that.”

James said her original motivation in sharing her story was to get her job back. Now, she’s not so sure.

“I don’t think I would want to continue to work for someone who would do that,” she said.

-- Samantha Swindler; sswindler@oregonian.com; @editorswindler

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