if this doesn't make you feel good, nothing will

dave_childress · Guest

such an awesome story.

Return of wallet, $20,000 'a miracle'

BY TIM ELFRINK AND ABE WINTER
WORLD-HERALD STAFF WRITERS

A few days after the Fourth of July and a few months after her father died, Omahan Jody Gardner relaxed outside her father's house near Lake Okoboji in Iowa.

Exhausted from a long day of settling her father's business, Gardner wearily watched a young man she didn't recognize walk toward her. He asked if she was Jody Gardner, and said he had found her billfold.

"I don't think I've lost it," she told him, but immediately felt a pang of panic as she followed him back toward the house.

Her billfold that day contained nearly $20,000. Gardner and her two sisters had closed out their father's accounts in town and thousands in cash and checks were in the wallet, in addition to all of Gardner's credit cards and ID.

Back at his pickup truck out front, the young man and his father - 48-year-old Tim Titterington and his son Dylan, 16 - presented Gardner her billfold.

It was tattered, ripped and empty.

"My heart just sank," Gardner said. "My father's whole estate was in that billfold, not to mention my whole life."

Someone must have found the wallet first, Gardner told them.

"No, I think we found all your stuff," Tim Titterington said. With that he pulled an old paper cup from the truck, stuffed full of hundred dollar bills, credit cards, checks and coins.

It was all there, every cent.

"I didn't know what to say," Gardner said. She offered the men a $100 reward, but they turned it down.

"All I could do was cry, hug them and say this was a miracle."

The miracle started earlier that afternoon when Gardner stopped at a grocery store in Milford, Iowa. Gardner had a lot on her mind, she said, dealing with her father's death. A few days earlier, they had spread his ashes above the lake behind his house while shooting off Fourth of July fireworks.

Lost in thought while loading the groceries into the car, Gardner left her billfold - stuffed with the unusual sum of money - on top of her car as she drove back to her father's house on the lake.

A short while later, the Titteringtons were surprised to see confetti flying around Iowa Highway 86 outside Milford, near their farm.

As they neared the churning mass of flying paper, kicked into the air by semitrailer trucks and cars running through it, they realized the debris was, in fact, cash.

"It was quite a sight, really," Tim Titterington said. "Twenties and hundreds are flying in the air, and it looked like confetti. Then you look down the highway and there's credit cards, receipts, coins . . . you name it."

They pulled to the side of the road and started collecting as many bills as they could find. They spent a full hour scouring a ditch and running into the highway, filling a paper cup with money, checks, credit cards and identification.

Then they went a step farther. They found an emergency contact number for Gardner, called that Omaha number and found out where her father's lake house was located. They then drove a couple of miles to the house to return the $20,000 to its owner.

"It could have been so easy to take all that money," Gardner said. "I had my driver's license in there, so all those checks could have been cashed, and there was so much cash."

But the Titteringtons never considered it.

"My father likes to be honest. He never does anything like that," Dylan Titterington said. "We're just farmers out here, and we've got most everything we need."

"You want to treat people the way you would like to be treated," Tim Titterington said. "So if you lose something, you hope somebody would be good enough to return it. For a 16-year-old, that's a valuable lesson. The good that you do, hopefully he'll learn from it."

Gardner said there's another lesson to be learned.

"We hear so much out there about the bad news that everyone gets kind of paranoid of each other," Gardner said. "Hopefully we can realize that there are a lot of good people out there, too."

Wagon · Harbinger of the Jadepocalypse

nope, nothing.

dave_childress · Guest

Jade · Jade of the Jadepocalypse

I love stories like these.

dave_childress · Guest

BodogSivana · Stablehand of the Jadepocalypse

You know...a story like this...it almost makes you believe in the goodness of mankind...really...if only we could all be that way...
_________________

"My job is to think. I teach children to think." -Brendan, Ballykissangel

Jade · Jade of the Jadepocalypse

dave_childress · Guest

BodogSivana · Stablehand of the Jadepocalypse

	Cellar Door Publishing Forum Index -> Cellar Door Community	All times are GMT - 7 Hours
Page 1 of 1