PEOPLE BEING PEOPLE

MIAMI - A bank in Florida refused to cash a check for an armless man because he could not provide a thumbprint. "They looked at my prosthetic hands and the teller said, 'Well, obviously you can't give us a thumbprint'," Steve Valdez told CNN on Wednesday. But he said the Bank of America Corp branch in downtown Tampa, Florida, still insisted on a thumbprint identification for him to cash a check drawn on his wife's account at the bank, even though he showed them two photo IDs. In the incident last week, a bank supervisor told Valdez he could only cash the check without a thumbprint if he brought his wife in with him or he opened an account with them. "I told them I neither wanted an account with them and couldn't bring my wife in because she was nowhere close by," Valdez told CNN. Bank of America said in a statement cited by CNN: "While the thumbprint is a requirement for those who don't have accounts, the bank should have made accommodations."