A brother and sister in Aurora, Colorado are receiving high praise from people across the country for returning a wallet full of money they found in someone’s driveway.
Haylie and Reagan Wenke, ages 13 and 6, were riding their bikes with a friend when they spotted a wallet sitting in a driveway. Figuring it belonged to someone in the house, 13-year-old Haylie picked up the wallet and approached the front door. An automated home security system caught what happened next:
When they arrived on the front porch, an automated voice from the surveillance system said, “Hi, we can’t answer the door right now but the camera is recording. So, please just leave us a message. Thanks for coming by.”
[Haylie] responded with, “We found your wallet outside of your car and we just thought we’d give it back to you. So, I don’t know,” [she] explained as [she] looked around for a good hiding spot.
“I’m going to put it over here, so no one takes any money,” [she] said, and places the wallet someplace off camera.
They all returned back to their bicycles and rode away.
As it turned out, the wallet belonged to Nigel Drake, who’d been walking into his house after getting off work from his bartending job when the wallet fell out of his pocket. It had $700 cash inside. Drake’s father, Jamie Carlton, subsequently saw the security footage, which he posted to Facebook in hopes of finding the good Samaritans.
Carlton’s post was shared across Facebook and eventually seen by Haylie and Reagan’s aunt in South Dakota, who put their mother and Drake’s father in contact with each other.
Drake told local news station KUSA that it was “heartening” to see what Haylie and Reagan did. “It gives you faith in humanity a little bit that there are good kids out there,” he said. “These kids’ parents are raising them the right way.”
As for the Wenke children, Haylie just said they did what’s right. “If you see something that someone left or dropped, to always give it back and do the right thing.”
Drake said he and his dad are trying to figure out the perfect thank you gift for Haylie and Reagan. They certainly deserve it.