Man returns $1,500 to Palmer woman

PALMER — This Christmas will be a whole lot merrier for one Valley woman treated to an extraordinary act of kindness this week.

Douglas Cruthers was hurrying back to his vehicle after doing some banking at the Matanuska Valley Credit Union in Palmer Wednesday when he noticed an envelope in the parking lot. He stooped to pick it up, placed it in his center console and continued to his next appointment in Wasilla.

Waiting in his car to catch his next appointment, Cruthers fished out the envelope and inside he found a thick stack of bills, $1,500 in all.

“I thought it was either Christmas or rent and it turned out to be both,” he said.

On his way home, Cruthers stopped by the Palmer credit union to see if he could return the money to its owner. At the bank he asked if anyone had lost something there that day.

A cashier said yes.

They exchanged a few more details before figuring out that Cruthers had found the white envelope lost in the bank parking lot earlier that day.

He said the cashier who helped him also was the same woman who’d helped the customer make the withdrawal earlier that day and later helped her search the parking lot for the missing cash.

The $1,500 was deposited back into the Palmer woman’s account.

Cruthers said when the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous, contacted him later that day to say thanks, she confirmed that the money in the envelope was for her rent and Christmas shopping.

“I am so thankful I was the one who found it so I could return it to her,” Cruthers said. “I know how it would impact us to lose that much money.”

He said it’s the most money he’s ever found, but not the most valuable item. That would be a $7,000 ring he found last summer using a metal detector.

“You never know what you’ll find,” said Cruthers, president of the Mat-Su Dirt Fishers Association, a local metal detector’s club he started three years ago.

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268

or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.