At a time when the disgraceful antics of college-aged “snowflakes” are giving young people a bad name, this 18-year-old teen from Sacramento, California defied that image by having the courage and goodness of heart to return a wallet full of $1500 in cash!
According to the Elk Grove Laguna News, Tyler Opdyke was passing out door hangers for his uncle’s pest control business, Strike Zone Pest Control, when he came upon a wallet laying in the driveway of a home in Sacramento. The wallet contained credit cards and $1500 in cash.
Opdyke went to the door of the house and rang the doorbell for a few minutes, hoping someone would come out. When no one answered, he noticed a security camera and showed the wallet to the camera before placing it just outside the front door.
As homeowner Melissa Vang explained, she had seen Obdyke in the video but when she didn’t recognize him, decided not to come to the door right away. Instead, she waited until he left and then checked outside. This is when she found her husband’s wallet with the cash and credit cards still inside.
Later in the day, when he was finished work, Obdyke went back to the home to be sure the wallet had been picked up, Vang was more than ready to greet him with a big thank you and a reward for returning the wallet.
“God bless this young man’s heart,” she wrote on Facebook. “My husband dropped his wallet (with hundreds of dollars and all his credit cards) in our drive way and this gentleman picked it up and left it at our doorstep after waiting for a few minutes, because I wouldn’t open the door (for strangers). I later found him. Thanked and rewarded him for his kind gesture. It’s sad that I didn’t trust him to open my door when he was just doing a good deed. Sadly, this is the world we live in today. We hear so many terrible news and barely any good. I think we all need to be reminded that there are still good people out there. His act of kindness cannot go unrecognized. Thank you Tyler. Please share!”
She posted the video which has been viewed by more than three million people.
The press eventually got wind of the good deed and asked Obdyke what was going through his mind when he saw the wallet.
“I saw a wallet and cash on the outside and then I thought to myself ‘if I was this person that dropped his wallet what would I want the other person to do’,” Obdyke responded. “Essentially the golden rule.”
Thank you, Tyler Obdyke, for restoring our faith in mankind!
