A California teenager is being called a hero after finding a wallet with $1,500 in cash in it, and promptly returning it to its owner, Inside Edition is reporting .
Sacramento homeowner Melissa Vang said that, when she first heard knocking at her door and saw a teenager holding a wallet on her security camera, she was suspicious. She doesn’t answer the door for strangers, she says. But the young man was persistent, and it took her a bit to realize that he was trying to do the right thing.
“It’s sad that I didn’t trust him to open my door when he was just doing a good [deed]. Sadly, this is the world we live in today. We hear so [much] terrible news and hardly any good.”
Tyler Opdyke, 18, had been walking through the Sacramento neighborhood where Vang lived, handing out flyers for his uncle’s pest-control business. At Vang’s house, he noticed the wallet, stuffed with cash, on the ground. Opdyke admits that, for a fleeting moment, he considered keeping the money.
“[My first reaction was], ‘Awesome! Cash!’”
However, Tyler immediately realized that returning the money was the right thing to do.
“It was not a hard decision because this could be somebody’s rent money and wasn’t mine to keep.”
Tyler Opdyke didn’t think twice about returning the wallet he found and the money that was inside it. https://t.co/ZbzAs5ur5W pic.twitter.com/t6cJ3JoJDU
— WDTN (@WDTN) September 20, 2017
He knocked on Vang’s door and, after not getting an answer, decided to leave and hope for the best. He returned a bit later to make sure that the money had gotten to its owner – in this case, Vang’s husband – safely. By the time Vang opened the door, Tyler had moved on.
However, Vang called the number and got into contact with Tyler. After meeting the Good Samaritan face-to-face, she gave him a reward, although neither Tyler nor Mrs. Vang have disclosed what it was.
Writing on Facebook, Vang says she wants it known that there are still good people in the world.
“I think we all need to be reminded that there are still good people out there. His act of kindness cannot go unrecognized.”
Great job @tyleropdyke ???????? Trustworthy teen returns wallet full of cash, credit cards https://t.co/ZlQRXebOqn
— Frontier High School (@FrontierTitans) September 20, 2017
While teenagers and their actions are often the subject of scorn, sometimes stories of teens doing good deeds make the news and goes viral. In one recent example, from 2015, teenager Christian Trouesdale, from England, became an internet sensation after his act of kindness towards an elderly man. The grocery store employee was caught on camera helping the man, who is believed to be in his nineties, carry his groceries home.
[Featured Image by Creatas/Thinkstock]
