HAGERSTOWN, Md. (November 19, 2009)--Officials at Mount St. Mary's University in Maryland said they thought they'd been blessed when a groundskeeper found $40,000 worth of rare U.S. coins near a campus shrine while raking leaves.

The two bags stuffed with gold and silver coins were left at the Grotto of Our Lady of Lourdes.

But Shrine Director William Tronolone said a woman approached him after Mass Sunday, six days after the discovery, to ask whether anyone had found some coins she had hidden beneath fallen leaves.

When he asked why she would have done that, the woman explained that she wanted the Virgin Mary to watch over her life savings while she was out of town.

She said it apparently worked, because the coins were safe.

Tronolone said the university's security director returned the coins Monday and persuaded the woman to put them in her bank's safe deposit box.