Students Find $41,000 in Couch, Return Money to Owner
Three New York college students found the perfect couch for their apartment at a local Salvation Army and purchased it for $20. What they soon discovered was that the couch contained $41,000 in cash that was hidden in the couch.
Reese Werkhoven, Cally Guasti, and Lara Russo took the couch to their home in New Paltz and quickly discovered that they had purchased more than they thought. They found envelopes of cash hidden in nearly every crevice of the couch. What they eventually learned was that a total of $41,000 had been stashed among the cushions and arms.
"I almost peed," Werkhoven told The Little Rebellion. "The most money I'd ever found in a couch was like fifty cents. Honestly, I'd be ecstatic to find just $5 in a couch."
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"Just when we thought we pulled out the last envelope, we'd find another $1,000 a few minutes later," added Guasti.
The students began trying to figure out who had previously owned the couch so that they could return the money. When they found a name on one of the hidden envelopes, the three had to have a serious discussion about what to do with their newfound fortune.
"We had a lot of moral discussions about the money," Russo said. "We all agreed that we had to bring the money back to whoever it belonged to … it's their money. We didn't earn it. However, there were a lot of gray areas we had to consider."
Each of the students called their parents to get more advice, and the advice was the same – locate the previous owner and discover if it's her money. Werkhoven's mother called the following day to say that she had found the owner. Werkhoven then called the woman and told her that he and his friends had purchased her couch.
"Oh, I left a lot of money in that couch," the woman replied.
Later on, the three roommates headed to Hudson Valley to meet the woman and return her money. They were nervous, though, about whether she was a good person and what type of scenario they were getting themselves into.
"I think the part of this whole experience that cleared away my prior thoughts and worries was when I saw the woman's daughter and granddaughter meet us at the door," Werkhoven said. "I could just tell right away that these were nice people."
The woman explained that her husband had been sick with a heart condition and gave her money every week to put away. She had been saving the money for 30 years in the couch. Unfortunately, she had an operation on her back and went to rehab. Her daughter and son-in-law replaced the couch she slept on with a full-size bed, not knowing that the money was inside the couch.
The three kept the couch but gave the money back to the woman, who was so grateful that she gave $1,000 to them as a reward.
