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Station Agent Fired For Helping Needy BART Rider Considers Next Move

OAKLEY (CBS 5) - A former Bay Area Rapid Transit station agent who gave a needy teenager $300 of unused transit tickets has lost his appeal to keep his job.

Jim Staneck had given a friend's 16-year-old grandson paid, unused tickets that commuters left behind at the station. The boy from Oakley used them to pay for the $11 trip from the Pittsburg / Bay Point station to San Francisco, where he attends the Flex Academy charter school.

BART Spokesperson Jim Allison said tickets are supposed to be turned over to lost-and-found, or they go to the agency's treasury department.

"Tickets that still have value on them can't just be given away, because that's cash for us," Allison said.

Stanek admits he should have given those already paid for unused tickets back to the company. He says there have been a lot of winners out of the case including BART, because it won its case and the kid, because after this all came out someone bought him enough BART tickets to last through his high school career. The only loser according to Stanek's family is Jim.

"I can't even get unemployment from BART because BART is fighting my unemployment," said Stanek.

He figures all he had to do was lie to avoid trouble. They probably couldn't have fired him.

But that's not his style.

(Copyright 2012 by CBS San Francisco. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)

 

Now he's considering hiring a lawyer.

 

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