A clerk in a clothing store in Indiana is being praised for after returning thousands of dollars that were found in the pocket of a coat.
Jennifer Kimes, a clerk at Plato’s Closet in Valparaiso, Indiana, was arranging some clothes when she found the wad of notes there. She said, “Sometimes you find gum, or a picture, or a grocery list,” Kimes said.
But this time, the thrift and consignment store clerk, found lots of hundred-dollar bills totaling $7,000. She immediately kept the money in a safe spot in the register, and called her boss, Tammy Wendland.
Wendland recalled, “I’m saying to her, ‘What did you say? What did you say?'” she added, “And [she said], ‘A very large sum of money.'”
Wendland contacted the jacket’s owner to return the money to him. She says he told her he had hidden the money in the coat but forgot that he kept it there. “He was extremely grateful,” Wendland said. Just extremely, overwhelmingly grateful.”
There was no reward for returning the money, but Wendland added that it felt good helping someone else. “Doing the right thing is rewarding intrinsically,” she said. “It makes you feel good inside to do the right thing, and there’s really nothing as special as feeling good inside.”
Kimes said, “It’s just about integrity. So when you work with things like this, you just have to make sure that you’re honest and you do the right thing.”