Wad of dollars found in bag of donations left by pensioner
A PENSIONER accidentally “donated” £7,000 to a charity shop after leaving wads of cash in a bag.
The woman, in her 70s, mistakenly left a bundle of notes inside a delivery she made to a boutique branch of Shelter in Hampstead, north London.
Staff at the charity shop, which supports homeless people, were shocked to discover the bag contained American notes worth $9,700.
The wad of $100 notes – worth around £6,940 – has now been returned to the woman after staff tracked her down.
Sophie Condren, the manager of the store in South End Green, Hampstead, was surprised to find the cash tucked inside an embroidered evening bag last Tuesday.
“I just opened up a bag full of handbags and found a big wad of hundreds,” said Ms Condren, 23.
‘She said she thought it had been stolen a while ago, but it was sitting in the bottom of a bag’
The former Royal College of Art fashion student said she could not have imagined keeping the money. “I wouldn’t want the bad karma,” said Ms Condren. “It was a lot of money and it was very obviously an error.”
Siobhan O’connell, a Shelter volunteer, said: “A woman in her 70s from Hampstead came into the shop with a bag full of handbags to donate to us.
“Sophie was going through the bags to make sure there was nothing in them when she found a load of money in an evening bag.
“She called me over and said, ‘Oh my God, look at this’. When I first saw it, I thought it was monopoly money.
“Then I looked at it and I realised it was real money in $100 bills.
“We counted it and there was a total of $9,700.”
They soon realised they could trace the owner via the gift aid form she had filled in when donating the bags.
Ms O’connell, who is retired, said: “She came in to collect the money and said she thought it had been stolen a while ago, but it was sitting in the bottom of a bag. We wouldn’t have dreamed of keeping it.”
The Shelter boutique stocks a mix of designer, vintage and high street pieces, with money it raises going to the charity.
The shop was set up in 2016 by Wayne Hemingway, the fashion designer, to celebrate the charity’s 50th anniversary.