Woman Whose Car Broke Down Finds Newlyweds’ $15K Walking to Work and Returns It — Now She Has a New Ride
Diane Gordon’s car broke down a year ago last February, and since then, the Michigan resident has walked nearly three miles to and from work five days out of the week.
But her luck recently changed after she did a good deed.
As she recalled to FOX affiliate WJBK, Gordon was walking home on Jan. 21 when she spotted something out of the ordinary on the ground while stopping at a gas station for a snack.
“I looked down on the ground and found a plastic bag with a large sum of money in it,” she told the news station. “When you turned it over, there was even more money.”
But Diane Gordon, a grandmother of two, never questioned what to do next.
“This doesn’t belong to me, I need to call a police officer,” she remembered thinking to herself after finding the $14,780 in cash.
Fortunately, it didn’t take long to find out who the money belonged to. When officers arrived, they found cards addressed to a couple whose wedding ceremony had occurred earlier that day.
“There were wedding cards with a name on it, and we were able to get the money back to them,” Police Chief Dan Keller of the White Lake Township Police Department told The Washington Post.
“She didn’t hesitate; she didn’t question it,” Keller said of Gordon. “This doesn’t happen very often, that someone finds a large sum of money and turns it in.”
But Gordon, 65, felt she didn’t do “anything special” by not keeping the money for herself.
“All I did was return something that didn’t belong to me,” she told the Post.
Yet, there was one other person who did feel her kind act was special — Stacy Connell, whose husband is a police officer who responded to Gordon’s call.
Connell set up a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for Gordon in the hopes of raising enough to help her buy a new vehicle. As of Tuesday afternoon, it has raised over $66,000.
On Feb. 3, Gordon received her new wheels: a green Jeep Compass from a local car dealership, Szott Auto Group.
“I am floored,” Gordon told ABC affiliate WXYZ. “I am having a hard time keeping it in. I am just so excited.”
“I absolutely love it,” she added to the Post. “It’s got a steering wheel warmer and a backup camera; all things I’ve never had before.”
Gordon said she plans to offer rides to her co-workers who need them.
“I’ll give them a ride home and pay it forward,” she said.
