$11,000 Found At Store, Cheryl Gavazzi Returns Purse And Cash To Owner

One woman's valuable discovery nearly turned into a nightmare after she found a purse containing over $11,000 in a store.

Cheryl Gavazzi of Beverly, Mass., was shopping in her local Marshalls last week when she found a Vera Bradley purse that caught her eye. She picked up the handbag thinking it was for sale only to find it belonged to someone else and had $11,340 inside. Along with the roll of money was diapers, wipes and medical records of young children.

“I liked it, actually. I was thinking of buying it,” she told the Salem News. “I wanted to see the size of it, and there was a roll of money in there.”

Instead of reporting the bag to the store, Gavazzi immediately thought to call the police to return the bag and money.

“I ran to the car, threw it in the front seat and locked my doors, looking for drug dealers following me,” Gavazzi told the Boston Globe. “I’m a nervous wreck looking.”

Turns out the money belonged to a person who ran a fundraising effort to build a church in Guatemala. The bag had been reported missing earlier to police.

“You don’t see good deeds like that very often. It was definitely a good thing that she did,” Beverly police officer Dave Costa told Salem News. “It’s nice to know that there are people out there like that, who do the right thing.”

And the good deed turned into a pay it forward for Gavazzi. She reportedly met one of the owners on Wednesday and he gave her an unspecified cash reward.

"He was actually going to sell his car when he found out this money was lost,” Gavazzi told CBS News. “It could be their life savings, for all we know. It was the right thing to do.”