Now in movies and books, the sorts of people who casually leave that kind of money lying around their home also tend to be people who will hire other highly motivated single minded individuals to retrieve that money.
Such folks often ask questions in a direct way that may involve blowtorches, meat hooks, cattle prods, and butterfly knives. So I wouldn't want to deal with anyone like that. And what's right is right. If someone really did misplace that money it's probably not right for me to keep it, is it? Or is it?
I like to think that I would try to discover the rightful owner of the cash. Doing the right thing is important. On the other hand finders keepers, losers weepers. Finding an unexpected $43K is like a wolf finding a bird nest on the ground. You don't ask how it got there, you just eat!
But a Michigan man named Howard Kirby who found this money said he had to do the right thing and return it, even though like many people, he had his own pressing needs. People have come together to praise Kirby and help him with some of his issues.
OVID, MI — When Howard Kirby returned more than $43,000 in cash he found in a couch cushion he bought at a thrift store, the mid-Michigan man said he didn’t want attention or expect a reward.
But doing the right thing has touched others who are now helping Kirby with his needs.
The Saginaw branch of Eikenhout Building Supplies is donating the materials needed to give Kirby’s home a new roof and a local contractor has volunteered to fix it, Kirby said Wednesday, Jan. 22.
A GoFundMe page in support of Kirby has raised more than $2,200 as of Wednesday afternoon.
“I don’t know how to say it, I’m blessed,” Kirby said. “I’m blessed beyond words.”
Kirby lives in Ovid, a small city about 10 miles west of Owosso, with his eldest son Ben, daughter-in-law Diane and a menagerie of their pets: a dog and six cats. He’s almost a year into full retirement after a career in floor maintenance with Walmart.
The old set of furniture he purchased for $70 at a Habitat for Humanity Restore is spread across his basement. His cat Misty relaxes on the same cushion Diane found the cash inside, stuffed into two envelopes.
The last few years haven’t been kind to Kirby and his family. Ben lost his job, causing his family to move in. Kirby himself went through a divorce and a cousin he was very close to died suddenly from cancer this time last year, not long after he dodged a tumor of his own when he had a kidney removed.
Finding the cash inside the old couch was surreal for Diane. She could barely find words other than “Dad, money!” Both Ben and Howard thought she was talking about Monopoly money at first, she said. It could’ve done wonders for their house, but at the end of the day, it wasn’t Kirby’s money and he knew he wanted to do the right thing.
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