Liberty, Mo., woman's lost Christmas money returned

The Associated Press

KANSAS CITY, Mo. -- A little honesty combined with some seasonal generosity have saved the holiday for a Liberty family.

A friend had recently given Deborah Trillin $1,000 to pay a few bills and buy Christmas presents for her three children. To Trillin, who lost her job in September, it was a sign that her luck was changing.

But as she was loading her car after shopping at a Wal-Mart in Gladstone on Friday, she noticed that her wallet was gone, and with it, the $800 remaining from her friend's gift. For 1 1/2 hours, she searched her car and combed the parking lot with Wal-Mart employees.

They found nothing, and she feared her children would get no presents after all. Plus, the wallet had her unemployment check and other important documents.

"Everything I owned was in the wallet," she said, adding that without the money she couldn't make her car payment.

All there

Another friend later suggested she call police to see if someone had turned in the wallet. To her shock and pleasure, the police had it, and what's more, "there was not a penny gone," she said.

Eric Norris had spotted the brown leather wallet in a shopping cart. Norris, a college student, had gone to Wal-Mart to buy Christmas music with his wife, Jennifer.

The young Gladstone couple spent two hours trying to track down Trillin, but her phone number was unlisted and she was not home when they stopped at her house. They decided to leave the wallet with Gladstone police -- just minutes before Trillin called the department.

Trillin and the Norrises still haven't met. But late Friday night, Trillin called the Norrises and thanked them. Eric Norris said he could hear Trillin's youngsters in the background screaming, "Thank you."

"I know that if I lost all that money, I wouldn't want anybody to keep it," said Jennifer Norris, who works in child care.