I found $1,300 while buying sheets at a thrift store – even though the owner had died, I didn’t walk away with the cash
A THRIFT store shopping trip saw one woman get more than she bargained for.
Sgt. Jody Waldron from British Columbia, Canada, was off duty when she made a mysterious find in her new sheets.
Google MapsThe cash had been missed by at least three different people before it was discovered by Sgt. Jody Waldron[/caption]
In 2014, the police officer purchased the sheets from the Delta Hospital Auxiliary Thrift Store but found cash inside them once she was back home.
Waldron told the Delta Optimist how the sheets were still in their original packaging but that they had been opened.
Once back home, she threw the sheets in the washing machine and found that a cash-stuffed envelope had been tucked inside of them.
The envelope contained $1,300 in outdated $50 and $20 bills.
According to Waldron, the envelope was government-issued and there was also paperwork with the cash.
While the police officer could have easily pocketed the cash for herself, she knew that the rightful owner had to be found.
However, with the paperwork not containing any names or addresses, she was forced to use her work contacts.
The Sergeant took the envelope to the fraud department and officers managed to track down the rightful owner.
However, Connie Buttrick died in 2002 without telling anyone about her secret hiding places.
Instead, officers tracked down her granddaughter Barbara Chant.
The shocked woman explained that the sheets had passed through the hands of herself, her mother, and thrift store workers without the cash being found.
Chant’s mother cleaned out Buttrick’s home following her death and put the sheets away in her own house.
This then led to Chant finding the sheets when she cleared out her mother’s home when she went to a care home.
Rather than keeping them, Chant donated them along with some other items to the thrift store.
When her grandmother died the family did not think there would be money anywhere as Buttrick was not well off.
“We never even looked. My grandmother was not a wealthy woman,” she told the news outlet.
Rules on finding money
While state and local laws may differ slightly, the majority will require you to attempt to find the owner of the money.
If you fail to make reasonable efforts to track down the owner, many states can charge you with theft or larceny of lost property.
The penalty will most likely be based on the value of the lost property as larger finds that are kept without making reasonable efforts to find the owner may be classed as a felony rather than a misdemeanor.
The term reasonable efforts includes asking people nearby if they dropped any cash, checking the envelope or wallet (if there is one) for an ID, handing it into a nearby store, or contacting the police on a non-emergency line.
Some laws will authorize the police to return the money to the finder if no one has claimed it after a period of time.
Always check your local and state laws which will most likely outline what to do if you find property or cash.
It is also advised that you contact the police or a criminal defense lawyer who can assist in what the laws state and how you should proceed.
Source: Criminal Defense Lawyer
However, it seems that Buttick did sometimes squirrel her money away in unofficial places.
After her death, Chant said they would occasionally come across a $20 bill in a book but never anything like the $1,300 in the thrift store sheets.
“We really appreciate all the trouble the police went to track us down,” Chant added.
She noted that the money was put into the bank for a rainy day.
The U.S. Sun previously reported on a woman who found a “fat bag of money” outside a grocery store.
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