today.com · 15 hours ago

$12,000 Found in a Sunglasses Case

A cabinet left behind by a former tenant. A sunglasses case too tempting not to open. And inside -- stacked to the brim with hundred-dollar bills -- twelve thousand dollars that didn't belong to him. Sak Yiengjuntuek, who runs a Vietnamese-Thai restaurant in Myrtle Beach, didn't hesitate for long: "I knew right then that it belonged to the previous owner." What followed was a patient hunt for a disconnected phone number, a live TV moment that jogged his memory, and an audible "oh my god" on the other end of the line when the former owner heard the news. The timing was quietly devastating in the best way -- the man had been in the middle of a serious, costly health battle. Yiengjuntuek says he's a little surprised by all the attention, but not by what he did. "Don't give up honesty," he says simply -- not as a motto, but as something he already lives. The post office clerk who stopped him on the street said it plainly: "You did the right thing." Sometimes that's the whole story, and it's enough.