California teenager stumbles upon purse containing $10,000, turns it in to police
Rhami Zeini did the right thing, and he's now $100 richer.
Zeini, a 16-year-old high school junior from Santa Barbara, California, was headed home from school last Wednesday when he saw a black purse in the middle of the street. He picked it up and started digging around, trying to find an ID. Instead, he discovered that the purse was filled with money — $10,000 to be exact. Zeini notified his parents, and they brought it to the Santa Barbara County Sheriff's Office.
"To me, I figured this is the right thing to do if I take it and find whoever's purse it was because if the roles were reversed and I had lost something with a significant sum of money inside, I know I would want it back for sure," he told KEYT. Deputies were able to track down the purse's owner, and she was so grateful that she gave Zeini $100 as a reward. Kelly Hoover, a spokeswoman for the sheriff's department, said the woman likely put her purse on the roof of her car and forgot to grab it before driving off.
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Catherine Garcia is night editor for TheWeek.com. Her writing and reporting has appeared in Entertainment Weekly and EW.com, The New York Times, The Book of Jezebel, and other publications. A Southern California native, Catherine is a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.
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