Anonymous
Source: Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office
In a world where we are bombarded with bad news, we are excited to share a positive story with you. On Wednesday, 16-year-old Rhami Zeini was driving home from school when he saw a purse in the roadway near Turnpike and Cathedral Oaks. When the Laguna Blanca High School junior looked inside the purse he saw a large amount of cash. He tried to find contact information with a phone number for the owner but could not. He got a hold of his parents and they drove to the Sheriff’s Office and returned the purse with $10,000 dollars inside!
Our Watch Officer was able to contact the owner who was very grateful, as you can imagine, to have the purse returned. She believes she left it on the roof of her car when she drove away. As a token of appreciation she gave the young man $100 of the cash. Thank you Rhami for doing so many things right from observing the purse in the first place, stopping to get it, contacting your parents for help and for turning it in.
Rhami said he was just doing what he would want someone else to do if he lost something valuable.
What an honest kid! Oddly, I just lost my man purse with a similar amount of cash. I think it fell off my motorcycle. The murse may be indistinguishable and separated from the cash, so if anyone finds any cash in any denomination let me know. I will offer a better % as a reward.
Asked my friends what is amount they would have given as a reward – three said about $1,000 or a little more.
This is so odd. Who carries this much cash let alone is so careless with it that they leave it on the roof of their car? And only $100 reward??? This kid deserved a lot more! Should have given him $500+
Exactly! Who carries around $10K in cash? I know a few types of people who do. Also, $100 reward is a joke. If you have $10K in cash, you can surely afford to reward more, unless it’s not your $$ to be giving out to begin with…..
Wait, if the young man couldn’t find any contact info, how was the Watch Officer able to? Was there some secret pocket with the owner’s ID that only police are able to find? Did she report the purse missing?
Good heavens, this young man turns in money and there are simply complaints about how much he got and the person it belonged to. Worse than leaving a purse on the car roof, I read some years ago about a woman who left her baby on the roof in a carrier (while she unlocked the car door) and drove away. I imagine the police found the owner because it had been reported lost.
Sure, what he did may have been the honest thing to do, but that ain’t how you survive in the real world. When the universe hands you $10k, you keep it.
I cannot believe the comments. Where do you people hide during the day under a rock? The kid did a honorable thing returning the money. End of story!
Who knows what that money was earmarked for? May have been $10,000 for a specific purpose and the reward was all that could be spared. I once found almost $1,000. Took some doing to find the owner, he’d been on the way to the post office to buy money orders to pay bills. Our local paper got wind of it and the money loser and I were on the front page. Our paper comes out (weekly) the day of our Farmers Market. I couldn’t believe how many people came up to me and said, “I think I’d have kept it.” One man said, “I believe in Jesus and I don’t think I’d have returned it.” I told these folks they might think that but if it happened to them I believe they’d have done the right thing.
Oh, for goodness sake! This young man did the right thing. That is reward enough! I imagine he will continue to do the right thing throughout his life, and not expect any reward or gold stars for his efforts. It’s called being a good citizen.
It’s no one’s business how much was offered as a reward, or even if a reward was offered. (Nor is it our business what the owner was carrying that much cash for!)
The parents and the kid spent way more than $100 dollars worth of their time getting this back to the owner. Shame on the owner for not realizing that and then “rewarding” him with a pittance. Especially since you were such an idiot by not taking care of your $10K in the first place. Whoever the owner is, step up and reward this kid properly.
I think we all agree: $100 reward is just being penny-pinching. For shame.
Good kid. Sure hope the SO watch officer reported returning the $10k to the Treasury Department. They keep track of cash transactions that size and up; money laundering, drug dealing, and that kind of stuff.
I could be wrong but I also thought I read on the keyt article at first that the owner said she was hiking and “thinks” she might have left it on her roof after the hike. who the heck hikes with 10k on them?? this situation does not pass the sniff test at all
Amazing to be careless with that amount of cash. Even I, who have been known to be forgetful and a bit lah-dee-dah with my possessions, even dropping my wallet not too long ago (a kind gentleman pointed it out to me, tout suite, thank you great person) —-even I would have a FIRM GRASP on an amount of money of that size. When you lose money or a dog or a kid or anything of with that kind of value, you must reward the finder accordingly. $100 reward is pittance. If ever there was a case where instant karma was warranted, this was it.
I once heard it said that honesty is the best policy. Seems like such a simple concept, but some of the comments make me wonder how it came to pass that people’s sense of morality and ethics became so polluted. (See:Pussy grabbing president)Maybe someone should write an app for those times when one is confronted with such difficult moral quandaries.
PS To the “believer”…WWJD?