A holiday miracle is credited with saving the job of Correction Officer Eleazar Paz after he was fired for failing a drug test in 2016. His supposed drug of choice…a poppy seed bagel.
The 12-year veteran of the Department Of Corrections and his lawyer told the Corrections Departments legal team that the drug test came back positive because he had ingested a poppy-seed bagel the day before he was tested but the bagel defense was ruled out because most New York City vendors use washed poppy-seeds to cut back on the opium alkaloid narcotic component found in poppy seeds.
After more than a year of court dates and legal mumbo-jumbo, the Judge in the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings ruled that the poppy seed bagel could have produced the failing test.
The corrections officers lawyer, Megan Rha told the New York Daily News that she and her client "tried everything," to prove his innocence.
Officer Paz was reinstated to his $82,000 a year job on Christmas Eve.
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