While cruising through Caroline County, Virginia, on Saturday to relieve themselves of cabin fever from lockdowns related to the COVID-19 novel coronavirus, David and Emily Schantz noticed that a car ahead of them had swerved to avoid hitting something in the road.
Rather than swerve as well, the Schantzes, who had their children along for the ride, decided to park their pickup truck and remove the stranded sacks from the road before they could cause a wreck.
While the family initially thought nothing of the sacks as they sat in the bed of the pickup truck, they later realized that they had been carrying around almost $1 million in cold, hard cash.
"Inside of the bag, there were plastic baggies and they were addressed with something that said ‘cash vault,’" Emily Schantz told Richmond, Virginia, outlet WTVR.
Despite the current state of the US economy and the simple fact that most people could use an extra million dollars in their bank account, the family decided to do what authorities say was the right thing and contacted the Caroline County Sheriff’s Office.
"They came back to Caroline, and found out they'd been riding around with almost a million dollars in the truck," Major Scott Moser recounted to the outlet.
Though an investigation is ongoing, deputies believe that the money in the bags belongs to the postal service and was lost en route to a local BB&T bank.
"For someone so honest and willing to give that almost a million dollars back, it's exceptional on their part,” Moser said. “Their two sons were there, so I put the lights on for them, but we are proud and they represented this county well by being so honest."
While not everyone in this situation would feel the same, Emily Schantz told WTVR that her family knew they had to “do the right thing and return it” based on the simple fact that “it didn’t belong” to them.
Though the family has only received a thank you from the sheriff’s office, perhaps the intended recipient of the lost loot will feel grateful that this family didn’t turn the funds into their personal stimulus package!
Moser expressed to the Associated Press that the family’s “actions deserve nothing less” than a reward.
"They saved someone a lot of money and set a wonderful example for everyone else,” he argued.
