EMMITTSBURG, MD - A Pennsylvania woman decided to leave some rare coins worth $40,000 out in the open at a local catholic shrine.

Turns out, a groundskeeper at "Our Lady of Lourdes Shrine" in Emittsburg was cleaning an area of the grotto there earlier this month when he found the two bags of rare coins.

Clifford Swisher, the groundskeeper, said, "I thought someone left it there as a donation to the grotto.  That was my first thought, and I started looking at it and I cleaned it and I thought, ‘I don't know.’"

The woman who owns the coins has since come to claim them.  She said she left them there in the safe keeping of Mary, the mother of God, before she went out of town on a trip.

Officials have since persuaded her to store the coins in a safety deposit box at a bank.