Newspaper carrier makes city mayor’s day
Uniontown Mayor James Sileo said he’s grateful to a Herald-Standard newspaper carrier who found and returned a retirement pension check that he thought was lost. “I want to thank these people for being so nice,” Sileo said.
The carrier, Dee Cassons of Uniontown, was delivering papers to customers along Bailey Avenue Thursday morning with Delphia Zemartis of Uniontown, when Cassons reported she happened upon a U.S. Treasury check lying on the street.
“I showed it to her (Zemartis) and said, ‘That’s Mayor Sileo,'” Cassons said. “It was signed.”
After finding the check around 6 a.m., Cassons contacted her supervisor who looked up Sileo’s address, which is across town in the West End, and delivered it to him about an hour later.
“He couldn’t believe it. He was really ecstatic,” Cassons said.
Sileo said the event affirmed the pride he has in the city and its citizens.
“I am very proud that I live in a city where people care about each other,” Sileo said. “I try to live that way and I’m proud others do, too.”
He said he received the check about two weeks ago and placed it in the sun visor of his car.
However, he kept putting off a trip to his bank, and at one point the wind must have blown the check out of the car window.
“They said, ‘We found your check,'” Sileo explained. “It was my pension check. I thought it was wonderful. I’m so grateful.”
He said he gave the women a reward and learned a lesson about where not to put anything valuable.