Scrupulously Honourable

"We both agreed right away this money had to be returned."
"She was just beyond words. She was totally shocked and speechless. She couldn't believe that anyone would call to return the money."
"We knew that this money did not belong to us. We didn't feel there was any other option but to return it."
Rabbi Noah Muroff, Torah teacher, Yeshiva high school, New Haven, Connecticut

Rabbi Noah Muroff, an Ottawa native now teaching in New Haven, Conn., shows the $98,000 in hundred dollar bills he and his wife found in a desk they bought online. Photo: Esther Muroff

"If God wants us to have the $98,000 He'll make sure He gets it to us in some other way. God is not limited."
Esther Muroff

"I cannot thank you enough for your honesty and integrity. I do not think there are too many people in this world that would have done what you did by calling me. I do like to believe there are still good people left in this crazy world we live in ... Please accept this gift for you and your family, along with my thanks. I will always be grateful."
Patty

'Patty' is otherwise unnamed in the news story revolving around the return of a very large sum of money discovered by 28-year-old Torah high school teacher, Rabbi Muroff. This was a woman who had recently lost both her parents, one after the other. She inherited from them a considerable sum of money, in cash, $100 bills. Which she had in a plastic bag. At the same time that she was attempting to deal with the anguish of her parents' death, she felt overwhelmed by everything in her life.

She had decided to sell a piece of furniture, advertising a desk for sale on Craiglist. The price for the cherry desk was set at $250. When Rabbi Muroff made enquiries, she agreed to sell him the desk for a study in his modest home for $150. When he had taken the desk home, he discovered it wouldn't fit through the doorway of his study and proceeded to dismantle it, intending to put it back together once it was in the study. Through the dismantling process, a plastic bag was discovered wedged behind a drawer.

Rabbi Muroff and his wife immediately thought of informing the woman from whom the desk had been bought, and they did indeed that very night call her, even though it was almost midnight. To inform her that they had discovered a bag of hundred-dollar bills totalling $98,000. She told them that she would never have known what had happened to the bag she had been desperately looking for, had they not called her.

The following day, taking their four children with them on the trip to return the money, they did just that. "This is what's required of us, and this is what we're happy to do. We're taught constantly about keeping in mind the feelings of others", said Rabbi Muroff. And they wanted their children along to expose them to the reality of an object lesson in personal responsibility.

An exchange took place between the young couple with their four children, and the woman to whom they were returning property that was hers. They handed over the bag, intact with the $98,000 in cash, and the woman handed them back an envelope, with a card expressing gratitude for their honesty. Besides the card was an expression of her gratitude in funds; $3,500, along with $150 representing what they had paid for the desk.