A Florida man walked into a Wawa bathroom in Palm Beach County carrying a black fanny pack containing $30,023 in cash — proceeds from selling his Pokémon collectibles, which he was planning to use to help pay for his sister’s medical procedure. He set it down. He walked out without it. He came back.
The money was still there. He returned it to staff. The rightful owner was reunited with his Pokémon money.
This is not how Florida stories are supposed to go. Somewhere, a deputy is re-reading this and checking to see if it ends differently. It does not. The man had $30,000 in a fanny pack — for reasons that are both explained and somehow still confusing — and when he left it behind in a gas station bathroom, he went back and gave it to someone instead of pretending it never happened.
To be fair: he was carrying the money in a fanny pack to a Wawa bathroom because he was selling Pokémon cards to fund medical care for a family member. The American healthcare system remains a reliable source of situations in which people are in Wawa bathrooms with $30,000 in cash for understandable reasons.
Florida, you almost had something wholesome. Then we re-read the part about the Pokémon cards and the fanny pack and the Wawa bathroom and realized: no, this is still Florida. It’s just Florida being accidentally decent.
All of this actually happened. The Washington Post verified it, bless their hearts.