As you can imagine, a lot of money has been found tucked away in items donated to Goodwill, but they’ve never found anything like this before.
“Just from working here a month and a half, I’ve realized that there are a lot of things that have been donated,” said Andrea Lessing. “You want to make sure there’s good product, there’s no stains, there’s no holes, there’s no tears, there’s no rips.”
One day, she came across two sweaters wrapped together, holding what she thought was books.
On closer inspection, she found it wasn’t.
“There was just stacks of just envelopes and it just contained $100 bills,” Lessing said. “My first thought was – it’s fake.”
It was real – a stack of $100 bills totaling in $42,000.
Along with it were documents with information that helped them track down the owner – something also highly unusual.
“Normally we have no way of knowing who the money belongs to,” said Frank Holland, Vice President of Donated Goods at Goodwill. “Even if we wanted to try to give it back to someone, there was no way to find who that person was.”
Of course, we’re all only human and the thought of keeping or hiding a find like that might cross our mind.
But Andrea rose above the natural instinct.
The owner of the money wanted to remain anonymous – but they did want to thank her for the integrity she showed that day.
“They asked us if we would give you $1,000 out of that money and give that back to you,” said Holland. “Thank you for what you’re doing and your integrity. You’re really living our values and that’s for you.”
Read more about this inspiring story here!
(Photo courtesy of Lacey Lett)
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