He Found A Veteran’s Lost Wallet, What Happened After He Returned It Will Warm Your Heart….

Simple acts of compassion can occasionally out to be the most fruitful. The goodness in our hearts is still demonstrated by this teen’s 2015 story. An adolescent returns a misplaced wallet; it’s a straightforward tale. But even that small gesture meant a lot to the veteran.

Imagine that as you go about your day, you come across a wallet on the ground. It’s not bare. Instead, it contains a few thousand dollars in cash. How would you respond? Try to return it to its owner while keeping it undisturbed? Or just claim it as yours since giving it back can be a nuisance. One Californian teen, though, found it simple to make the choice.

Senior at Irvington High School Tommy O’Connor encountered a “What would you do?” situation while he was exiting a 7-Eleven in Fremont, California. According to The Mercury News, at this time, the teenager was returning to Irvington High School after purchasing a Coke at the convenience store when he saw a wallet lying on the ground.

He took it up and discovered a large quantity of $100 dollars inside. Tommy didn’t count the money at the time, but it was later found that there was $2,300 in cash in the wallet. Tommy was forced to decide between trying to find the wallet’s original owner or going on a shopping extravaganza as he stared at the pile of cash.

He knew it was quite a lot, so the teenager thought it was something important.

“I didn’t count it when I saw it. I just thought it was probably someone’s rent or something,” he said in an interview.

Tommy’s family had to live on a fixed income. Even the day before, Tommy did not have enough money to buy lunch. That amount of money could have helped out his family a lot. But the teenager immediately handed it over to Ana Gomez, his paraeducator. “He was so concerned about finding the wallet’s owner. No other option even occurred to him. He immediately knew what he had to do,” Gomez recalled.

Gomez looked through the wallet to see who owned it. She totaled the money and discovered a veteran’s identification card. She then gave the wallet to Sarah Smoot, the school’s principal. They handed the owner of the wallet back the wallet intact.

The word quickly spread about Tommy’s excellent work. Actually, the high school had sent his mother Sherry a direct SMS informing her of the teen’s behavior. As a result, she texted her son before the day’s classes ended:I’m very proud of you son. Ms. Kalra called me. Wow, your [sic] one in a million. Love you to the moon and back.”

“You should be thanking yourself. You raised me,” not willing to take the credit, Tommy replied.

Tommy’s father Ron had similar praise for the teenager’s kindness:

“With us living month-to-month, it is a big chunk of money and I’m so proud of him that he did that. I’m just proud that he did the right thing, and hopefully, all of my children would’ve done the same thing”

In fact, the veteran was so grateful for the teenager’s kindness, that he left him a $50 reward. But Tommy remained ever humble. He replied to his mother that she should be thanking herself for raising him. About his actions, Tommy said: “I’m just doing something I wish everyone else would do.”

Tommy O’Connor is one of Dipa Kalra’s pupils and a physical science teacher at Irvington High School, he remarked that Tommy has always been that kind of person – he’s really sympathetic to other students. “I called his mother and told her she should be proud. He never thought of himself, only what the wallet’s owner was feeling.”

If stories like this do not inspire us to do the same, we don’t know what will. On our part, let’s strive to maintain the same integrity in our lives that the teenager showed.

Watch the video below for more details:

Sources: TapHaps, The Mercury News,  KPIX 5,  CBS Local