Guadalupe Reesor holding the $1,050 dollars that she found. Photo: Screenshot / WFAA.

An employee at a Jewish organization’s resale shop in Dallas, Texas discovered in the pocket of an old coat $17,050 that was then returned to the 78-year-old widow who donated the jacket, the local station WFAA reported last week.

When Guadalupe Reesor found four cash-filled bank envelopes tucked in the pocket of a black pea coat at The Resale Shop — owned and operated by the non-profit Jewish Family Service — she immediately contacted her boss.

“It was just so much that she could hardly hold on to it. I looked at it and thought ‘that can’t be real,'” said Assistant Manager Kristina Russell, who then called Cathy Barker, chief operating officer at Jewish Family Service, and told her about the discovery.

Barker told WFAA about the money, “It was something any non-profit organization could definitely use. But that wasn’t the right thing to do.”

One of the bank envelopes had something written on it that Barker was able to match to a name in the JFS’ donor database. They then tracked down a 78-year-old widow, who asked to be identified as Sheri and said the coat belonged to her late husband. Sheri was surprised to find out about the money tucked inside of the coat and was clueless as to why her husband would put cash there.

She said that, following her husband’s death in January, bills started piling up, which worried her. She told WFAA, “[I was] really concerned, so I didn’t even reconcile my checking account this month. I didn’t even want to know what I’m going to be doing next year and what I’ll have to give up.”

JFS gave Sheri a check for $17,050 and the widow later gave Reesor $1,000 for her honesty.