Couple Turns in $1,500 Found Scattered on Roadside

Loretta Christenberry was frantic after losing a folder with $1,500 in cash.

Christenberry, 75, who divides her time caring for her 89-year-old husband who has Alzheimer's disease and running the mango business he started nearly 20 years ago in northwest Bradenton, last remembers leaving the folder of money sitting in her husband's wheelchair while she waited on customers. She doesn't know what happened to it after that and didn't report it missing because she didn't want to wrongly accuse someone of taking it.

She had set aside the $1,500 to pay for fertilizing the fruit trees that are the mainstay of their business. The crop this year, she said, wasn't as robust as in years past. She searched everywhere, but when she realized the money was gone, she decided it wasn't worth crying over.

"It was my fault," she said.

And then she got a call from the Manatee County Sheriff's Office asking if she had lost something. She couldn't believe it.

Someone had found her money and turned it in.

Deputies told her several times that it was a lot of money and she should have reported it missing. The only reason they knew to call her and ask her if she was missing something was an Easter Seals envelope addressed to her husband. It contained a calendar, so she had also stuffed it in the folder in case she needed to look up a date.

For Jill Thurmond and her husband Joel, who found the money on Saturday scattered across the grassy shoulder of a road while on his usual early morning bike ride, there was never a question of what they would do with the money.

Her husband had commitments that day, Jill Thurmond said, so "we talked about it, and I told him I would turn it in."

Sure, she said, people pick up coins on the side of the road or even find $5 and pick it up, but "most of us aren't used to seeing that kind of money." 

"That was a lot of money," she said. Especially in this economy.

And the decision about what to do with it was easy.

"There were two main things," she said. "It belonged to somebody else and they lost it. And it wasn't ours, and we wanted to do the right thing."

Her husband found a folder near the money along his bike route in northwest Bradenton, and Thurmond said it seemed obvious that the money had been inside it at one point. There was also the envelope with a name, so Thurmond was sure that the sheriff's office would find out where the money belonged.

How the money ended up on the side of the road is still a mystery.

The deputy who met with Thurmond didn't show any surprise at Thurmond turning in the $1,500, she said.

"He did say something about how he appreciated me turning it in," Thurmond said. "He probably was surprised to a certain extent."

That's the way Thurmond wants it: "No hoopla." She was just doing what was right, she said. She was so humble about her actions that she didn't want her photo taken. Again, it was just the right thing to do.

"I'm so glad that the person got it back," Thurmond said. "It all worked out, and we're thrilled."

But Christenberry said Monday she definitely wants to thank the couple for their honesty.

Between caring for her husband, the 250 trees he planted and selling the fruit, Christenberry couldn't let the loss worry her.

When it comes to priorities even her customers know her husband's needs come first, she said.

"I had gave it up as a lost cause," Christenberry said. "It was a lesson that you learned."

And then she discovered that there are still honest people who care about someone they have never even met.

"They could have very easily kept the money," she said. "No one would have known."

Instead they brightened her day.

"I am doing much better than I was a couple of days ago," she said.