Honest Goodwill worker returns $42,000 she found in donated sweater. Then, she got a surprise of her own

An employee at a Goodwill in Norman, Oklahoma, set an example when she came across a shocking find. Back in 2021, Adrea Lessing, who just started her role as a store associate found stacks of cash worth $42,000 while sorting through a box of donations. The employee overcame her human instincts and decided to report the find and return the money to the rightful owner. The heroic act grabbed widespread attention and earned the worker a well-deserved reward.  

A fortune found in old clothes

Lessing was sorting through a pile of donations at her Goodwill location to check for the quality of the items. She told KFOR that she had just worked for a month and a half but she had realized that a lot gets donated at the store. She said she was looking through the items to make sure the products were good, and there were no holes, tears, or rips. 

While checking the items, she came across two sweaters wrapped together. At first, she thought there were books inside the sweaters but on looking closely, she realized it was something else. 

“There was just stacks of just envelopes and it just contained $100 bills,” Lessing told the news outlet. She further explained that initially, she thought the bills were fake but later realized that they were real and amounted to a total of  $42,000. "It was definitely shocking," she said while speaking to Good Morning America.

Finding money wasn't unusual for Lessing but this time the amount was just too big. She immediately alerted her supervisor and the staff used the documentation of the donation to track down the rightful owner of the money.

While Lessing made the decision to report the money and return it, she told GMA that she did get the human temptation to keep the money.  "Don't get me wrong, I'm human. Naturally, the thought crosses your mind like 'I just found $42,000, I could get this, this, and this,'" she said.

A Goodwill representative told CNN that it was the largest amount of money found in any donation at the Oklahoma Goodwill, in its 85-year-long history. It was also one of the largest finds at any Goodwill location internationally.  

However, being a good role model and setting an example for her 6-year-old daughter was more important for Lessing. She shared that she wanted to instill honesty and compassion for others in her daughter and she could only do so by doing the right things herself. 

Good work doesn't go unrewarded

Goodwill commended Lessing for holding up the values of the company. Furthermore, the owner of the lost cash told Goodwill staff to give her $1,000 of the money to reward her actions. 

Jim Priest, the CEO of Goodwill Industries of Central Oklahoma at the time, met with Lessing to present her the reward. "The actions of Andrea and our Goodwill organization are real-life examples of one of our core values: integrity,"  Priest said in a statement shared with Fox News. 

Meanwhile, Lessing told GMA that she was surprised by the generosity of the owner. She said she only wanted to do the right thing and wasn't expecting a reward or to be on the news across the nation.