Honesty is the Way

From USA Today:

The old $20 couch from the Salvation Army was “pretty ugly” and smelled, but it fit the apartment three New York college roommates were sharing.

When they got their funky, lumpy seating home, the new owners discovered its big redeeming quality: nearly $41,000 stashed inside.

“I almost peed,” Reese Werkhoven told The Little Rebellion, the student paper at State University of New York at New Paltz , which first reported their March find Monday.

“We put it all on a bed,” Cally Guasti recalled to the Associated Press on Thursday. “We laid it all out and started counting. And we were screaming. In the morning, our neighbors were like, ‘We thought you won the lottery.'”

Only one other person was happier about their second-hand windfall: the 91-year-old widow they returned the money to. Her family had unwittingly given away her three decades of hidden savings when she became ill.