An employee made a stunning discovery when she was processing a heating pad brought into A Second Look Consignment Superstore in North Phoenix last week -- $9,080 in cash.
After finding the loot, rather than doing what many would have done -- keep every last penny -- Rose Wingo told her boss, and the people who brought the heating pad to the store were contacted.
"It never crossed my mind to keep the money -- I'm a Christian," Wingo tells New Times.
Christian or not, $9,000 probably could have turned into $8,000 without anyone asking any questions, if ya know what we're saying.
The money was wrapped up in 16 envelopes with the amount contained in each envelope written on the side.
Along with the cash, Wingo found a marriage license and a birth certificate.
Wingo and her manager say the money belongs to a woman who recently died after suffering from Alzheimer's Disease. The woman apparently had been hiding money for awhile, without letting anyone in her family know.
After the woman died, her daughter was helping her father sort through the woman's stuff, and without knowing what was in the heating pad box, she took it down to the consignment store.
According to Wingo and her boss, when they called the woman, she was shocked. And she gave Wingo a "very generous reward."
These sort of things are not all that rare. About two weeks ago, somebody donated a water cooler to a Goodwill store in Marietta, Ohio, that had about $1,500 worth of marijuana in it.
Whoever donated the weed, however, was less inclined to retrieve it, despite an invitation from local law enforcement agencies.
