Wallet allegedly stolen returned 8 years later with $141, cards still inside

— -- Courtney Connolly was working as an intern at a Wellfleet, Massachusetts, theater in 2009 when she said she left her car windows down one night while at work and returned to find her wallet gone from the car.

Eight years after it disappeared, Connolly's wallet was returned to her this week, with her Social Security card, driver’s license, credit cards and $141 cash still inside.

“I can’t even begin to explain it,” Connolly, 30, told ABC News. “I had completely forgotten about this wallet.”

Connolly, now a nursing student, received a text this week from her sister-in-law saying that a police officer had dropped the wallet off at Connolly’s childhood home, where Connolly's brother and sister-in-law now live.

“I said, ‘What are you talking about? I have my wallet in my hand,’” Connolly recalled.

The police officer, whose name has not been released, was on duty helping with dismissal at a school in West Roxbury, Massachusetts, when a male driver handed her the wallet and told her someone had thrown it through the window of his car, a Boston Police Department spokesman told ABC News.

The officer was not able to take down the vehicle’s license plate, the spokesman said. She found the address of Connolly’s family home on a pay stub in the wallet and hand-delivered it to Connolly's surprised sister-in-law.

Connolly said she could not believe that not only was her wallet returned unscathed -- even a card for a free item at a clothing chain remained -- but it also still had $141 cash inside at a time when she needs that money the most.

Connolly is both paying for nursing school and training for a powerlifting competition, for which she said the entry fee is almost exactly $141.

“This gift falls in my lap eight years later when I needed it more than anything,” she said. “I know $141 isn’t a lot of money but when you’re trying to go week to week on a really small budget, it’s huge.”

Connolly’s wallet was a gift given to her by her brother. Still taped inside the wallet is a fortune cookie message placed there by her brother that reads, “Soon you will receive pleasant news.”

“I don’t know if someone saw that ... I don’t care,” Connolly said of the circumstances of her wallet’s disappearance and return. “The fact of the matter is, they turned it in and did the right thing.”