update:
so the place opened at 11AM the following day, and we showed up at 930. my girl had said most places do open a bit earlier to prep food, clean up etc before customers start to arrive, so our thought process was to catch whoever opens (the manager) to see if it was found.
we sat there for a half hour, nobody showed - finally people started showing up...some waitresses, mostly cooks - a van rolls up and about 9 mexicans hop out and when I ask who the manager was, their collective response was "yames" (james)
we ask a few more people who the manager was, where they were at, nobody could interpret what we were saying - majority of them were just cooks. finally an asian girl walks in (ironically speaking perfect english, unlike the cooks) and i ask her about the manager and she points to this car driving by, which was this dude eyeballing my car...I walk up and ask if he's the manager and his response was "Is this your car?" and I was caught off guard because my mind wasn't on the car, but rather the hundreds of dollars my girl might be out...so I say "yeah..." and he says "nice car very very nice!" so I thank him and quickly explain we have to check lost/found for my girl's purse. he says he was not in yesterday, but to follow him in and he'll check.
we walk in, he goes to the cash register, looks around, reads some post-it notes...then he bursts out "AH HA!" and there's her purse! every dollar still in it, every bank card, etc. we breath a huge sigh of relief, tell him thank you/we'll be back etc. this would of been a huge impact on us financially, so thank god our waitress (who i'm assuming found it, as the waitresses were also bussing) was honest enough to turn it in - goes to show that mutual respect and kindness (thank yous, tipping well, etc) can truly pay off!
