Waiter returns woman's $600,000 cheque she left at restaurant

When a retired New York woman left her $600,000 cheque at a local pizza store, she said her “world just collapsed".

But an unlikely hero came to save the day – the very waiter she burned with no tip and a sassy note.

After looking at an apartment she hoped to buy, Karen Vinacour, 79, and her daughter went to the historic Patsy’s Pizzeria in Manhattan to grab lunch.

Tucked in an envelope was a cheque with the money Ms Vinacour planned to use to put a down payment on her new home.

During lunch, the mother-daughter pair pointed out to their waiter, pre-med student Armando Markaj, that out of all the framed photos of the owners with famous customers on the wall, there seemed to be very few women.

“Maybe women don’t eat a lot of pizza?” Ms Vinacour recalled Mr Markaj replying.

Ms Vinacour told NY Daily News: “My daughter’s kind of feisty and she didn’t like that.”

Instead of leaving behind a tip, the pair left a note read: “I guess women don’t tip either.”

Unbeknownst to Ms Vinacour she also left a cheque for more than $600,000.

“I had no idea we left it behind,” Ms Vinacour told NY Daily News.

Mr Markaj was cleaning up the table when he noticed the envelope.

“I thought it was important, so I ran out to the street to look for her, but she was gone,” Mr Markaj said.

When he looked inside the envelope, it took him by surprise.

He called the store’s owner, Adem Brija.

“He called me immediately and hands me this cheque and I was like, ‘Oh my God.’ I didn’t want to put it in my pocket it was so much money,” Mr Brija told Yahoo Lifestyle.

‘My world just collapsed’

While the cheque had Ms Vinacour’s name on it, Mr Brija had difficulty tracking her down.

Mr Brija said they decided to hold on to the cheque for a couple of days to see if the woman would return. If she didn’t come back they would hand it over to police.

Meanwhile, Ms Vinacour and her daughter became distressed when they discovered the bank could not begin the process of cancelling the cheque until three months later.

“My world just collapsed,” Ms Vinacour said.

The former social worker had spent her retirement volunteering with charities and was struggling to secure a new home loan because because of a student loan she took out for her daughter years ago.

Ms Vinacour furiously began retracing her steps and when she rang Patsy’s to check if she had left it at the restaurant, she didn’t realise she had called the chain pizzeria’s wrong location and was devastated when they told her they had found nothing.

‘Happy we could help’

When Ms Vinacour did not show up a few days later, Mr Brija decided to enlist the help of the NY Daily News — and the reporters tracked down Ms Vinacour almost immediately.

When she arrived, both Mr Brija and Mr Markaj, the waiter she spurned, were waiting at the door.

Mr Brija said the woman “was in tears” and did act a bit shy when she saw the snubbed waiter.

She apologised for not tipping Mr Markaj during her meal and offered to tip him this time around. But the 27-year-old declined the money.

Mr Markaj and Ms Vinacour made up over more slices of Patsy’s pizza.

Mr Brija even took her around the restaurant to point out all the women on the wall she had missed the weekend before, including TV host Barbara Walters.

“We joked with her and said we’d add her picture up on the wall,” Mr Brija told Yahoo Lifestyle.

“Just to see the relief on her face when she got her cheque back. It was a heartwarming moment.

“We’re just really happy we could help.”

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