A Tennessee math teacher and his wife have been hailed Good Samaritans after the couple returned a bag with almost $13,000 in it to its rightful owner, KATU.com reports.
Kenneth and Kristy Allen were at a convenience store in Clarksville over the weekend when they spotted the abandoned bag sitting atop a trash can.
"I got my husband's attention and I told him -- I said, 'Go look at that bag, it looks like a money bag,'" Kristy told Fox 17 News.
She was right on the money. The bag, which also contained a wallet and a bottle of cologne, was filled with $12,764 in cash.
Kenneth said he immediately tried to track down the owner of the bag using information from a driver's license he found in the wallet.
He soon learned that the owner -- a 51-year-old man who does not want to be identified -- had been hospitalized after suffering a reaction to his medication soon after he left the convenience store.
According to Fox 17 News, the owner of the bag -- who was captured on security camera -- was seen acting strangely in the store just moments before he left his belongings on the trash can.
Kenneth said several minutes had passed before the bag was spotted.
"For like 47 minutes I think it was, people were walking by. No one even noticed it, no one touched it, no one even seemed to see it there," he told KATU.com.
According to WSMV-TV, Kenneth handed the bag over to police and it has since been returned to its rightful owner. He said the man has already spoken to him over the phone and wants to meet him in person.
"He was grateful. He said I was one in a million," said Kenneth, a teacher at a public school.
Though Kenneth could have used that money to pay off his back taxes and student loans, the honest teacher said he never even thought to keep the money.
"It's the right thing to do and its just a shame that people now think that doing the right thing is extraordinary," he told Fox 17 News.