© Rick MerlingHoward Kirby found $43,000 in a cushion of a couch he purchased from a thrift store in Owosso, Michigan.Howard Kirby found $43,000 in a cushion of a couch he purchased from a thrift store in Owosso, Michigan.
Howard Kirby purchased a couch from the Habitat for Humanity ReStore in Owosso only to discover it came with the wad of cash inside one of the cushions, the store manager told ABC News on Saturday.
Kirby decided to return the money to the couch's owner.
"He could use it. ... He has needs, but he said he just felt this prompting from God that said, 'This isn't yours,'" store manager Rick Merling said.
© Rick MerlingHoward Kirby found $43,000 in a cushion of a couch he purchased from a thrift store in Owosso, Michigan.Howard Kirby found $43,000 in a cushion of a couch he purchased from a thrift store in Owosso, Michigan.
"It was very, very shocking to them," Merling said.
The couch belonged to the grandfather of the family, who died about a year ago, according to Merling. The family called the thrift store to ask them to pick the couch up and left their contact information.
"I think they were hoping there might be some pictures. They would have never dreamed that it was money," he said.
While Merling said the store often hears from people who discover items left behind, Kirby, who could not be reached by ABC News, was the first to actually return something.
"He's happy that he's got a couch," Merling said. "Someone said, 'Are you gonna give the cushion back?' And he said, 'No, that's a $43,000 cushion.'"
Reader Comments
A true hero.
The people who will pretend virtue in a situation such as this, where it's obvious that no one is being hurt because no one knows the money exists, are the same people who will gloat at an acquisition gotten in a fire sale due to someone having debts they can't repay, or dress up in a nice suit and work at a bank whose business it is to steal money every day. Why? Because we can romanticize this story, imagining that this is kindly old Grandpa's life savings, with absolutely no evidence that this is true.
About 30 years ago, my husband and I were in a little hole-in-the-wall Mexican restaurant. It was crowded with people who obviously worked hard for a living. We figured it must be payday. You ordered at the counter, and while we were waiting among the crowd to do that, my husband looked down and spotted a $50 bill. We knew, from the look of the crowd, that $50 was likely to be the month's food budget for somebody. So he went up to the counter, said we'd found some money and if someone asked about it, to send them over to our table. We waited for quite a while, but no one came.
If I find something that is obviously of value to someone, and there's anything I can do to return it to them, I'll do it. I hope that someone would do the same for me.