A Minnesota teenager got a strange catch while fishing this summer. He reeled in a wallet with $2,000 cash.
Fox News reported that after reeling in the expensive find on a 4th of July Lake of the Woods trip, Connor Halsa and his family went through the wallet to find the identification of its owner.
He said, “Everyone started going through it to try to find the dude it belonged to.”
“When we kind of got a general idea of what was inside, we put it in the console of the boat so it didn’t get blown out,” he added.
He noted everyone was determined to find the owner and return his wallet with the money inside. “It wasn’t my money,” he said.
A business card inside the wallet helped Halsa track down the owner. It was the only card and gave information for a cattle rancher named Sherry.
Upon contacting her, the family was directed to the wallet’s owner, who lost it a year ago.
Iowa resident Jim Denney, 75, and his wife had taken a trip to Lake of the Woods in July of 2022. He noted that the last night of the trip, he realized his wallet was missing when he went to pay his bill.
“I was devastated. I just didn’t know what the heck to do. There I was, broke. So, the other guys floated me the money to pay up,” he said.
“That’s a million-acre lake,” Denney recalled while accepting the wallet and his money were gone.
When he got a call from Sherry, she asked if he had been fishing, and he told her about the trip and the missing wallet.
She then told him that the wallet was recovered along with the missing money.
He expressed his disbelief but told the family, “You guys keep the money. That money’s already been gone.”
The family responded, “No, we’re not going to do that. We’re going to send it back to you.”
Denney and the Halsa family met at a Texas Roadhouse in North Dakota where he gave Connor a personalized Yeti cooler to show his appreciation for returning his wallet with the money.
He also told Connor, “I’d like to have seen the expression on your face when you brought it up out of the water and saw all the money.”