A 10-year-old boy struck gold when $10,000 was found in a drawer at a Kansas City hotel. However the good samaritan turned the money in to police.
Tyler Schaefer was staying at the hotel with his dad when he found $10,000 worth of stacked bills in their room on Saturday. His father, Cody Schaefer meets his former wife in Kansas city to get their three children for summer vacation.
Schaefer says his Cub Scout son has a tendency to go on hunts for treasure.
"He looks for stuff at random," Schaefer said of his son. "He's very observant."
According to Schaefer, Tyler started immediaitely opening all of the drawers after checing in to their room. Shortly into his search, Tyler told his dad, "I found money!"
Schaefer was thinking his son found a left-behind $10 bill or some other small domination. What he wasn't expecting to see was a stack of bills which totaled $10,000. At first Schaefer thought the bills might have been fake but they seemed to have the correct watermarks and wound up being legitimate.
"We didn't know what to do at first," Schaefer said.
Cody told his son that they wouldn't be able to keep the money since it wasn't theirs and they didn't know who left it behind. They decided to turn the money over to two off-duty police officers that work as security for the hotel. The police contacted their sergeant who is a property and evidence supervisor. Sgt. Randy Francis stored the cash at the police station.
The Kansas City police aren't sure how long the money was at the hotel and they said it is difficult to track down all of the guests who stayed in the room recently. No one has come forward to claim the money as of yet.
A Missouri statute says that lost money could go back to the finder if no one has proved that it's theirs within roughly seven months.
"I didn't come there with $10,000 and I didn't leave with $10,000," Cody Schaefer said. "So it was a wash."
This article is copyrighted by Travelers Today, the travel news leader
