A man who found $5000 in a chest of drawers he bought off Trade Me is being praised after he returned the money as a lesson to his children.
Schoolteacher Kev Derecourt was doing it tough after a rough break-up. He was trying to set up a new house for his kids, so picked up some cheap furniture for $60 from Rotowaro, near Huntly.
"I got home and unloaded it and it had liners in the drawers. I said 'oh, it hasn't been cleaned out'," he told Newshub. "Then I saw a bag under there and pulled it out."
When he opened it he saw the flash of red banknotes and immediately thought "shit there's money in there!"
After taking a quick look, Derecourt took it inside to total up the cash.
"Later, I counted it all out in $100 notes. I got up to 20 and still had a bigger pile uncounted," he told Newshub. "I thought what the hell am I going to do?"
Derecourt says it was a personal challenge for him to do the right thing - but knew he had to return the money.
So, the next morning, he called the man up who was "gobsmacked to say the least".
"He couldn't believe anyone would actually return it," Derecourt told Newshub.
"He began telling me about how his wife had been really sick and died of cancer and it was really emotional."
The man came to pick up the money, and gave Derecourt some chocolates and posters for his children, along with a "couple hundred bucks".
"It felt good to do the right thing, I used this as a model of how to be a nice person to my seven and nine-year-old daughters," Derecourt told Newshub.
"At that stage, it was a really rough time for me and I could have used that money… hopefully, this restored some of his faith in life."
Newshub spoke to the man who left the cash in the drawer, who says he is "very grateful" to have the money returned.
He says he put the money in the drawer for a rainy day after he sold his car, but he forgot about it.
"I'm very, very grateful," he told Newshub. "Absolutely there are some good people out there… he deserves recognition for the act he did."
