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California Goodwill Employee Finds $10K Cash In A Donated Book

By Chrissie Williams
Published on: 13:36 PST, Jun 15, 2016

Every once in a while, a news story warms your heart. Let’s face it, after the week of death, multiple shootings, and hatred, we all could use an uplifting story.

A California Goodwill employee named Lakeisha Williams was sorting through some donated books at a collection site when she came across an unexpected donation–an envelope full of $100 bills, ABC News reports.

The envelope had $10,500 in it, all in $100 bills. At first, Williams joked and considered pocketing the cash, knowing that no one would really know about it because she was alone in the collection room.

Then she thought that it might have been a mistake. She considered if she lost almost $11,000 she would hope someone would be honest enough to turn it in for her to claim.

“My concern was somebody was out of that money and I would like for them to get it back.”

She decided to hand over the cash to her manager last month, and to this date, has not been claimed. Goodwill stated that it hasn’t gone unnoticed that Williams did the right thing and handed over the cash, and they implied she will see a reward should the money remain unclaimed.

“What we did was take the money and put it in a hold account and we wait a pretty good amount of time to see if somebody comes forward and identifies and says they made a donation and a mistake. If nothing happens at that point, and all indicators are that nobody is claiming the money, at that time we put it into our normal donation steam revenue for our agency. We have a policy to reward our employees for their honesty and integrity.”

Apparently, the amount of money that she could receive as a reward could vary, but likely to be around 10 percent of the amount. He didn’t see Goodwill giving her more than 10 percent for turning the cash to her manager.

Should no one claim the money in the next three to four months, Lekeisha could be about $1,000 richer, and Goodwill will deposit $9,500 into their bank account.

Social media users were outraged after hearing Goodwill only planned to give her such a small amount for her honesty. Many people responded that they felt it was more than fair considering that the money was donated to Goodwill, not to Ms. Williams.

The truth is that Lakeisha Williams didn’t even consider getting a reward, she was merely trying to do the right thing. She was worried that someone lost the money or donated by accident and may need the money to pay their bills. Williams’ concern for the person who donated showed her good heart and had restored many social media users faith in humanity.

The most likely explanation to the money was the money was stashed in a book for safe keeping. When going through books to donate, it was forgotten they stuffed a wad of cash in the book. They likely didn’t flip through the book and tossed it in a donation box and left the money in the book.

Goodwill explained they were proud of Ms. Williams for giving the money to her manager and not taking the money for herself. As much as we’d all like to say we’d report the cash to our managers, many people likely would have taken the money and never said a word about it.

Would you have turned the money in like Lakeisha Williams? Do you think she deserved more than 10 percent bonus reward for her honesty?

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[Photo By Shutterstock]

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