Firefighters honor family that returned lost wallet with $2K cash inside

— -- Dave Starzec had just finished shopping at a local Lowe’s store recently when he became distracted and left his custom-made alligator skin wallet on the bumper of his truck.

The wallet not only was a prized possession for Starzec but also contained $2,000 in cash, multiple credit cards, checks, fishing and gun permits and Starzec’s passport and driver’s license.

Starzec, of Greer, South Carolina, was in the process of moving houses and transferring the items he normally keeps in his safe to his new home. The $2,000 cash was money that Starzec, a self-employed digital asset developer, had on hand for a client’s photo shoot.

“I was carrying my wallet so close to my heart, and I put it down for one second on my bumper to pick up a bale of mulch,” Starzec told ABC News. “I normally don’t leave things like that so important laying around.”

Starzec realized his mistake as soon as he got home. He retraced the 5-mile trip from his house to Lowe’s multiple times in search of his wallet. On the final trip, Starzec decided to stop at a firehouse in hopes that someone had turned in his wallet.

No one had yet turned in Starzec’s wallet at the Lake Cunningham Fire Department, but Capt. Benjamin Farmer took Starzec’s business card and said he would follow up. After Starzec left, Farmer logged onto a community Facebook page and saw that the wallet had been found.

“I was in the middle of canceling my American Express [card] when my phone rang and it was the fire department,” Starzec recalled.

Farmer connected Starzec with Miranda Clayton, who posted about the lost item on Facebook. Clayton and her mother-in-law, Peggy Lynn, were driving Clayton's 5-year-old son, Dylan, to T-ball practice when they found Starzec’s wallet with the money and cards still inside.

“I got out of the car and picked it up and immediately began to look for the owner’s name and a phone number,” Clayton told ABC News. “I didn't care if it had $5 or $2,000 or credit cards or anything else. All I knew was that it had a lot of important things in it and I needed to get it back to Dave.”

Clayton and her family first drove to the address listed on Starzec’s driver’s license. When they discovered that was Starzec’s old address, she posted on the community Facebook page.

“[I wrote] that I had something important that belonged to [Starzec] and I needed him to contact me,” she recalled. “I got a message from the chief of our local fire department saying to call him because Dave was at the station.”

Clayton, her son and Lynn met Starzec at the firehouse to return his wallet. The family found his wallet on a street less than one mile from his home.

“With social media, I got it back within the hour,” Starzec said of his wallet. “We were all blown away when we saw the money was all still there.”

When they met, Starzec and Lynn discovered they live just a few houses away from each other.

Starzec organized a luncheon for the firefighters, Clayton, Lynn and Dylan on March 23 at the firehouse.

The family received good citizen plaques from the fire department. Dylan received a fireman’s helmet and T-shirt from the firefighters.

“I’ve been a fireman since 1980, and I’ve never come across this,” Farmer said of the good deed. “There was $2,000 in there, and they could have easily just taken the money and thrown it in the ditch, and they didn’t.”

“They did the right thing, and we figured they needed an award for it,” he added. “We wanted to show the child too that if you’re going to be honest in the world, there’s good things that come to you.”

Starzec gave Clayton and her family a $200 reward.

“I never expected an award or recognition or anything,” Clayton said. “It was always about being honest, doing what’s right and helping my son learn a valuable lesson.”

She added, “[The wallet] wasn’t ours, so we needed to return it.”