A good Samaritan found a fanny pack stuffed to the brim with $30,000 cash forgotten inside a Florida Wawa restroom — but instead of pocketing it, he spent days tracking down the owner, who had pawned off his entire Pokémon collection to help pay for his sister’s medical procedure.
Luis Salazar, a construction worker, wasn’t sure what to make of the black fanny pack he discovered inside a Wawa bathroom on May 3. It was practically overflowing with cash, ranging from singles to $100 bills, but the owner seemingly vanished from the store.
Instead of keeping the cash for himself, Salazar spent the rest of the week trying to find the person who left it behind. The only — glaring — problem was that Salazar had no physical identifiers to go off of, save for a loose recollection of the stranger’s outfit.
The 24-year-old owner, meanwhile, didn’t realize he’d misplaced the potluck until he was an entire county away.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, my freaking money’s gone. I’m out of all this bread. I don’t know what I’m going to do,’” the distraught man recounted to WPBF.
The unidentified man told The Washington Post that he sold his childhood Pokémon collection for $30,023 in cash so he could help pay for his younger sister’s medical procedure.
And mere hours after sealing the deal, the money was in the wind.
The caring older brother eventually phoned the local cops asking about his lost fortune — and by May 7, he was meeting Salazar face-to-face at the station.
Salazar told the outlet that the younger man burst into tears and hugged him when he handed back the fanny pack with every penny accounted for.
“$30,000 is great, but it’s not mine to keep. I like to earn my money,” Salazar said.
Salazar humbly rejected the praise lauded on him. The relieved owner even offered to take him out to dinner, but he politely declined.
“I just did the right thing. I don’t need to be put on a pedestal,” he insisted.
The owner said he gave all the money to his sister a few days later. He didn’t specify what medical procedure she required the money for.
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