Hispanic worker returns $30,000 found in a bathroom in Florida: the owner had sold his Pokémon collection to save his sister

Luis Salazar, a Hispanic construction worker residing in Riviera Beach, Florida, returned $30,023 in cash that he found abandoned in the bathroom of a convenience store, after spending several days searching for the rightful owner of the money.

The discovery occurred on May 3 in the restroom of a Wawa establishment in Riviera Beach, when Salazar found a black fanny pack hanging on the safety railing.

Upon not finding the owner inside the store, he opened the bag to look for some identification and was met with an amount that left him speechless.

"My body went numb at the sight of all that money that belonged to someone else," Salazar stated to the local channel WPBF.

The pouch contained bills ranging from one dollar to one hundred, with a total of 30,023 dollars in cash.

What makes the story even more touching is the origin of that money: the owner, a 24-year-old who requested to remain anonymous, had sold his childhood Pokémon card collection to afford a medical procedure for his younger sister.

Just hours after closing that sale, the money disappeared.

"I thought: My God, my money is gone. I've lost all of this. I don't know what I'm going to do," the young man recounted, visibly distressed, to the same channel.

The owner did not notice the loss until he was already in Broward County, a county to the south, so he contacted the Riviera Beach Police to report the lost fanny pack.

Using the security cameras of the establishment, the agents were able to identify Salazar and summoned him to the police station on May 7.

There, the young owner met with Salazar, who returned the fanny pack with every penny intact.

The video from the police body camera captured the moment when the owner was counting the bills and verifying that nothing was missing, while tears streamed down his face.

"I handed him the bag and said: this is yours. And he was crying. He hugged me," Salazar recounted.

The worker humbly rejected all the praise he received and even declined the invitation to dinner that the owner offered as a gesture of gratitude.

"I only did what was right. I don't need to be put on a pedestal," he insisted.

Salazar explained his decision with a simplicity that summarizes his character: "It's not my money to take. I wasn't raised that way."

The owner gave the money to his sister a few days after retrieving it, although he did not specify the type of medical procedure she needed.

"I was extremely surprised that someone would do something like that. Think about it: it's life-changing money. There are people who would do anything for that amount," acknowledged the owner of the money.