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Kind thrift store worker finds $5,000 in a donation bag, tracks down the owner to return it

Now, that's a Good Samaritan.

via Angelslover/Pixabay

Clothes on a rack at a thrift store.

Thrift stores are an excellent place for shoppers to get a deal and, occasionally, find something extremely rare that’s worth a lot of money. CBS News reports that the owner of Pick of the Litter thrift store in Burlingame, California, just outside of San Francisco, came across an extraordinary discovery in a bag of donated clothes and did the right thing by giving it back.

Pick of the Litter is a thrift store that sells various second-hand items, including clothes, household items, art, jewelry and watches, books, records and musical instruments.

Oliver Jolis, Pick of the Litter’s owner, was organizing a bag of donated clothes when something unexpected happened. "Money just started falling out," Jolis told CBS News. "It kept falling and falling. I was like, 'This is a decent amount of money here.’”

When Jolis counted up the cash, it came to $5,000. The donor must have put the money in with the clothes for safekeeping and then forgotten.

But instead of pocketing the cash or splitting it with his coworkers, Jolis and the other folks at the thrift store got to work trying to find the person who mistakenly donated the money.

Luckily, they left a clue to their identity in the bag of donated clothes.

Jolis found an old scrap of paper in the bag with car insurance information. The information was enough to track down the person who donated the bag of clothing. They realized it was a woman who regularly donates to the store. The woman told CBS News that she prefers to remain anonymous.

The thrift store staff reached out to her and asked a series of questions to be sure she was the person who dropped off the bag. She passed the test with flying colors.

"I said come on down I've got something for you. She came back, and I gave her $5,000 in a paper bag and said, 'Thank you for supporting us,'" Jolis said. "He could have just put the money in his pocket. Nobody would have known. But he didn't," said the woman who donated the clothes.

​CBS News says that Jolis’ display of kindness is par for the course at the thrift shop, where all proceeds go to the Peninsula Humane Society.

These days, shelter pets in the Bay Area need all the help they can get. The recent moratorium on evictions, mixed with a shaky economy, has forced many to surrender their pets to local shelters. A recent heatwave in the Bay made things even worse. Many dogs that belong to unhoused people suffered burned feet and paws after walking on the hot asphalt and concrete and were surrendered to shelters for treatment.

For Jolis, doing the right thing and returning the money to the woman who accidentally donated it was easy. It was just a case of giving back to someone who had given so much to Pick of the Litter.

"We're grateful for all the donations we get, so it was a win-win," said Jolis.

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Well Being

After 16 years sober, Dax Shepard bravely announced a reset of his sobriety clock

Dax Shepard/Instagram

With 16 years of sobriety under his belt, Dax Shepard has served as a beacon of hope for people in recovery. With a reset of his sobriety clock last week after confessing to a slip with prescription painkillers, he still is.

The actor has been open about his addiction to alcohol and cocaine, and that transparency and honesty has undoubtedly helped many people through their own recovery journeys. But recovery from addiction is not always a one-way, detour-free road. Even people who have been sober for years must be diligent and self-aware or risk relapsing in ways that are easy to justify.

That's the scenario Shepard described in his recent podcast, in which he announced that he's now seven days sober. For people who struggle with addiction, it's a cautionary tale. He didn't take a drink, and he didn't touch cocaine. His slide into addiction relapse happened with prescription painkillers—Vicodin and Percocet. He started taking prescription pain pills after a motorcycle accident in 2012, moved to taking pills with his dad who was dying of cancer, and then came a gradual spiral of justifications, lying, gas lighting, and other addictive behaviors that enabled him to abuse those pills without acknowledging he was doing so.

Shepard laid it all out to his podcast partner, Monica Padman, last week. The way he was careful at first to only take the pills his wife, Kristen Bell, administered. Then how he'd save his two nighttime pills, because they made it hard to sleep, only to take them the next day with his morning pills to get the high he wanted. How he'd ask himself if this was a slip, start feeling like he was maybe in trouble, then convince himself he had it under control.


He talked about how easy it was to convince himself it wasn't really a problem because the pill use felt "manageable." He knew if he started drinking or doing cocaine, he'd be out of control—he understood those to be unmanageable addictions. But the pain pills didn't keep him from doing his work or his dad duties or his normal daily life, so it was easy to keep using them.

Then he explained how, after more injuries this year, his painkiller use got "shadier and shadier." He started buying pills instead of just using the ones he was prescribed. When he started lying to his loved ones and was high at his 16-year sobriety celebration earlier this month—which he called "the worst hour of my life"—he knew he was in trouble.

So in recent weeks, Shepard came clean to Bell and Padman privately and gave them all of his remaining pills. He spoke to a friend he looks up to, who frankly told him that his biggest character flaw was arrogance, that he basically thought he was smart enough to outsmart addiction. He realized the only antidote to that was extreme humility.

Shepard attended an AA meeting and shared the whole story with them as well. He said it was one of the most powerful experiences he's had ever had.

"So Tuesday really was day one. Yeah. And then, so I went to this meeting and I…man, I've known the men in this meeting for seventeen and a half years because I had many attempts before I got going. And I told my whole story and I told it honestly. And I went first and I was crying and it turned into the most incredible, like, 90 minutes I've ever experienced, where there was just so much love and there was so much understanding and kindness in unconditional love.

And it's the only—there's probably been many others—but it's the only experience I can remember having that was just grace, the definition of grace, and it was very emotional and it was a really, really surreal kind of experience.

And when it was over, I actually mentally, for the first time in a very long time, felt optimistic because for the last while, a long time, I've known intellectually that things are going to get worse, that each encounter with it has gotten more shady and more dangerous, and I recognize that the next go around would be, oh, I can't get pills, let's snort heroin. And, you know, and I've had a lot of friends that I've watched go through this whole cycle.

And I finally have the humility to say I will not be any different, I won't be special, I won't be smarter. I will be exactly like everyone else."

Then he decided to come clean publicly, despite a great deal of fear and embarrassment in doing so. He said he worried about how it affect opportunities for Kristen, how it might impact him financially due to companies that might not want to work with him now, how the bombardment of judgments about what he should have done or could have done might feel, how people who looked up to him for his sobriety might feel betrayed or misled.

He ultimately decided that total and complete honesty was the only way to go. And of course, that authenticity is what his fellow recovering addicts really need to see.


"So if you got more than seven days, you got more than me. So you're my elder and I look up to you," said Shepard. "And, you know, onward and upward for all the people who have been along on this whole journey for the last few years. I feel—and this is not to sound cheesy, but I feel the same responsibility to the people who love the show and are with us, because I think it's such an emotional connection we all have."

Congratulations on your sobriety and thank you for your honesty, Dax. Onward and upward.

You can listen to Shepard's Armchair Expert "Day 7" podcast episode here.

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Dropping 17,000 ‘lost’ wallets across the globe taught researchers a big lesson about honesty.

Photo by Adam Gessaman / Flickr

The gold standard test for determining someone's honesty is seeing what that they do with a lost wallet. Do they keep it? Attempt to return it to the person who lost it? Or do they pocket the money and then dump it in a mailbox?

A researcher in Finland wanted to find out just how honest his countrymen were by posing as a tourist and dropping off a supposedly "lost" wallet with an employee at a local business and asking them to take care of it.

After the initial findings, the researchers hypothesized that if he added a larger sum of money in the billfold, fewer people would return the wallet. A poll of 279 top-performing academic economists agreed. But this time, the researchers decided to conduct the study on a larger scale.

Over two years, they staged over 17,000 wallet drops in 335 cities in 40 countries across the world and discovered that people are probably more honest than you think. The wallets were all about the same. They held a few business cards, a key, a grocery list. Some contained about $13 while others had no cash.

They discovered that in 38 of the 40 countries, people were much more likely to return wallets that had money, and in those that were less likely, the difference wasn't statistically significant.

Across 40 countries, 46% of wallets with no money were returned, compared with 61% with cash.

The researchers then conducted a "big money" study in the U.S., the U.K., and Poland by adding around $100 to the billfold and found that these wallets were returned 72% of the time.

"People were more likely to return a wallet when it contained a higher amount of money," the study's lead author Alain Cohn said, according to NPR. "At first we almost couldn't believe it and told him to triple the amount of money in the wallet. But yet again we found the same puzzling finding."

While the return rate in wallets with money versus no money was about the same across countries, there was a vast discrepancy in overall return rates. The more affluent countries returned the wallets far more often.

Switzerland, Norway, Netherlands,Denmark, and Sweden returned the highest percentage of wallets. China, Morocco, Peru, Kazakhstan, and Kenya returned the wallets at the lowest rate. The United States came out in the middle of the pack.

Although researchers aren't sure what specifically drives people to return lost wallets, basic human empathy is a huge reason. Another is that people don't want to think of themselves as thieves.

"[The study] shows in a very natural, experimental way our decisions about dishonesty are not about a rational cost-benefit analysis but about what we feel comfortable with from a social norm perspective and how much we can rationalize our decisions," Duke economist Dan Ariely told NPR.

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27 heartwarming, heartbreaking, revealing, and emotional notes people wrote to their moms.

"What do you wish you could say to your mom right now?"

Would you tell her how hard it is to appreciate everything she's sacrificed? Would you vent your anger? Would you apologize for a long-unacknowledged wrong?

Would you tell her how much you loved her?

That's what we asked people in New York City's Washington Square Park on a Thursday afternoon in May, the week before Mother's Day.

Participants wrote their messages on index cards and dropped them in a shoe box.

Aude from Paris writes a note to her mother. Photo by Eric March/Upworthy.

Some were heartwarming.

Some were heartbreaking.

Some were revealing.

Some made no sense at all.

All were intensely personal.

The largely anonymous notes express a kaleidoscope of emotion — sorrow, anger, love, guilt, and deep gratitude. All for the person who made their authors into the people they are today.

Here's what they had to say:

1. "You are my best friend, mentor & someone I can share everything with!! Love you Mom!!"

2. "Although we argue so much I will always love you"

3. "I'm living perfectly fine Mom."

4. "Hi Mom XOXO Miss you every day! Thank you for everything!"

5. "I love you. Ti tengu caru."

6. "The mitochondria in our cells come from our moms! Thanks for making me strong, mom!"

7. "Why did you have me"

8. "Mom, I hope you feel better from your surgery soon!"

9. Translated from French: "Mom, Thinking of you from across the ocean. I'm writing in French, but trying to think in English. Hugs!"

10. "I would love $20"

11. "Mom, if you weren't so tough on yourself, you'd be able to love unconditionally. Both you & I can change."

12. "Hi mom! Thank you for making me feel like I can do anything I put my mind to. I am your #1 fan and I can't wait to see you at the airport on Mother's Day!!!!"

13. A bit of impromptu artwork for mom.

14. "I love you. I'm sorry. You were always right!"

15. Translated from Spanish: "I would love to be sharing this journey with you too. We miss you. Happy day!"

16. "Even though I haven't seen you in five months, thank you for giving me the world."

17. "Pancakes?"

18. "dear mom, i am sending love and an understanding (& forgiveness!) on a universal level — and shared by all the Angels, of all you were willing to suffer & endure and sacrifice, for your daughters."

19. "I'm sorry"

20. "Mom, thank you for trusting me to make my own decisions this year. And thank you for supporting all of those decisions. I'm looking forward to seeing you soon and having some of your banana bread"

21. "Mom, wish you were still here. Your final days at that horrible Calvary Hospital were painful to watch.

I wish I could turn back the clock to 2008 when I seemed to have had a temporary nervous breakdown leading to me yanking the car keys out of your hand — leading to that horrible order of protection which separated us against your will and mine. At least I found someone to take care of you. Because of those years I have evolved into a more humble person. I am working to become a new positive person. Poor for now, but rich in spirit. You would be proud! I miss you terribly, and I apologize for spending your money in a careless fashion. Hope you see me from Above."

22. Translated from Spanish: "Thanks Mom for being the most protective, for believing in me, for being there, always. I love you a ton."

23. "Love you even if I spend tons of time doing what you tell me to avoid doing."

24. "LEiFUROTTO."

25. "Am sorry for all the stuff I did. I really love you & I wish you was here. Happy Mother's Day. Love you."

26. "Mama, I wish I could take you to all the places that make me come alive ... then I remember I celebrate them because of you ... I miss you ... I'm sorry ... I love you ... thank you."

27. I love you!"

The notes reveal that while a mother's effect on the lives of her children might be complicated, even fraught at times, it is always unforgettable, even years later.

Whether your mother was loving or distant, whether she was there or not, whether she's alive or passed on, for so many, she remains center of gravity around which parts of your life will always orbit.

If that's not cause for celebration, what is?

Happy Mother's Day.

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