What would you do if you found cash just lying out in the open, absolutely no hint as to who had lost (or left) it there?
Times are tough. You can imagine that many might at least fleetingly consider keeping it.
But a WSB reader we’ll call Texasgirl – her Forums handle – decided to find the owner of the cash she and her boyfriend discovered. She e-mailed us:
My boyfriend & I were out walking (Sunday) afternoon at about 1 PM, and we found quite a bit of cash laying on the sidewalk on Admiral, on the bridge over Fairmount Avenue … It’s enough money that we’re sure the rightful owner is missing it. These are tough times for many out there, and we know this could be someone’s grocery money or rent money. If someone can identify the amount and denominations, we’d like to arrange to return the money to them. If the rightful owner isn’t located, we’re planning to donate the cash to a worthwhile charity.
We e-mailed back to suggest they contact police, and post in the WSB Forums, where lost/found notices are welcome (aside from pets, which have their own page). So they did. And it worked.
Here’s Texasgirl’s forum post (similar to the e-mail above). On Monday, we got a note from Heidi Herr, owner of Bird on a Wire Espresso, saying she had been walking to an ATM to make a deposit Sunday afternoon and found money missing when she got there. “I can’t believe someone found it/wants to return it!” Heidi wrote. “How do I contact them?”
We put them in touch, and it turned out to be a match. So we thought we’d share the story here. Hooray for honesty!
10:14 PM POSTSCRIPT: Just before publishing this, we e-mailed Texasgirl to ask if we could at least use her first name. She said yes – she’s Karen and her boyfriend is Phill. She added, “It would’ve been great to make a donation of several hundred dollars to a charity, but I’m especially happy to get it back into the hands of a small business owner in our very own community. My grandfather was a small business owner just like Heidi and I know it would have been awful for him to accidentally lose a deposit like that.”
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