Three college roommates have moral debate after finding $40,000 in a couch





NEW PALTZ, NY–Three roommates initially passed over the worn couch they found at the Salvation Army. “It’s pretty ugly and smells, but it was the only couch that fit the right dimensions for our living room,” said Lara Russo, a SUNY New Paltz grad.

Once she and her roommates, Reese Werhoven and Cally Guasti, took it home and started relaxing, Werkhoven found something and “almost peed.” Underneath the couch’s arm was an envelope filled with $700, and a thorough search of the couch yielded $40,000. That’s quite a return on the $20 the three spent on the piece of furniture.

Initially, there were no signs of who could own the money, until Russo found a woman’s name on one of the envelopes. Now that the roommates knew the money potentially belonged to someone, it was time for a group meeting.

“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.”

Among those gray areas was the nature of the couch’s owner. They questioned whether or not the owner would be a good person, if they were alive at all. If the latter were true, who would they then entrust it to? After calling their parents for advice, it was decided that the owner had to be found, but Russo’s mother provided a caveat. “My mom said that I have a good moral compass, and if I don’t think that someone is a good person, or deserving of the money, then I’m not obligated to give it to them,” Russo shared with The Little Rebellion. “This really threw me off. Where do you draw the line? It’s all very subjective.”

Of course, all three had plans for what they’d do with the money if they were allowed to keep it. Paying back student loans and traveling the world were high on their wish lists. But the next morning, Werkhoven’s mother called and said she’d found the owner’s name in the phone book.

The college junior phoned the owner, who wished to remain anonymous. Werkhoven asked the woman her name, and told her that he had recently purchased a couch from Salvation Army. She instantly replied, “Oh, I left a lot of money in that couch.” After assuring the woman that her money would be returned, he felt surprised by her curtness, and the three wound up pausing halfway to the woman’s house.

“[W]e stopped the car and had a serious discussion…what if she’s a really bad person? What can we do at this point if we meet her and decide we don’t want to give her the money?”

Their fears were eased as they were greeted at the door by the woman’s daughter and granddaughter. “I could just tell right away that these were nice people,” Werkhoven said.

The woman explained to the three how the money had wound up in the couch. Before her husband passed away from a terminal heart condition, he had giver her money every week. She hid that money in the furniture, and for the next 30 years stored her savings from her job as a florist in the couch. She even used it as a bed…until she had an operation on her back. While at a rehabilitation center following the surgery, the woman’s daughter and son-in-law took her doctor’s advice and replaced the couch with a full-size bed.

Luckily for the woman, she was able to get her money back thanks to three honest individuals. “When we handed the money back to the woman, she told us that she felt like her husband was present in the room with us,” Guasti said. The three were rewarded a total of $1,000 for their good deed.

Would you return the $40,000 if you had found it? Feel free to comment below.

[about_faith]

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