An old woman in New York had a funny way of saving her money. She hid it in a zipped pocket in the arms of her old sofa. She felt it would be safe there.
And so it was, until one day when she was having some health problems and her family gave away the sofa to a Salvation Army second-hand shop without realizing how valuable it was.
That gave three young New Yorkers the thrill of their lives. When they bought a used sofa and chair, they believed they were just furnishing their apartment. They thought the arms seemed a bit lumpy. After they had had the sofa for a while, one of the room-mates decided to investigate the problem, opened a zip on its arm, and found some money wrapped in "bubble wrap". The young people opened the other one and found more money.
There was a lot of screaming coming from the apartment after that, the room-mates' next-door neighbour told news service The Associated Press. Euphoric screaming.
One of the packages also contained a piece of paper with a woman's name on it. They called her and she told them that she had hidden a lot of money in the sofa and she needed it back. She cried when the three visited her to give the money back to her.
The three said they thought about keeping the cash, but would not have been able to live with themselves if they had. |