$43,000 In Cash Found In Coat Donated To Goodwill

MONROE (WWJ) - It was quite a surprise for a worker at the Goodwill store in Monroe.

Manager Tyler Gedelian, was cleaning out the pockets of a donated jacket this week when he found a bright blue envelope. Inside, Gedelian said, he found bundles of hundred-dollar bills.

"You might find 25 cents or a dollar here and there in a pair of jeans or something, but nothing like that!" the 29-year-old told WWJ Newsradio 950's Sandra McNeil. "I didn't even really count it. I saw the bundles and they were bundles of hundred dollars and they were from the bank, so I assumed they were thousand-dollar bundles."

It all added up to $43,000.

"My bills are being paid, but $43,000? I think anybody could use that amount of money,"  Gedelian said. "I mean, kids' college fund, you know, retirement, investments ... I could do a lot with that."

But Gedelian said he didn't consider keeping the money.

"Oh, no ... never," he said. "As soon as I found it I was like, 'This isn't mine  .... we've got to get it back to the owner.'"

Gedelian called the police to help.

As it turns out, the man who had donated the clothes had been cleaning out an elderly relative's closet and didn't know there might be cash in the pockets.

Some of the bills dated back to the 1930s. The man who donated the jacked asked not to be identified.