Teacher returns $11,000 found on road to teach son good values

Sometimes money does quite literally fall from the sky.

South Carolina teacher Sherry Whitesides was driving with her 12-year-old son Alan when a bank bag full of cash flew off the car in front of her.

"I saw it hit the road, and then I saw the scatter," the 42-year-old tells ABC. "They were pink and blue, like the brand new ones, and my first thought was,'This isn’t real.'"

The fourth grade teacher pulled over and started collecting the stacks of $100 bills that had flown out of a black Wells Fargo bank bag. She also found a man's driver's license, credit cards and a bank receipt for $30,000.

Her intention was to return the $100 bills to the rightful owner.

"It was just the right thing to do," Whitesides says. "My whole purpose in doing this was to show my son the money was not ours."

It turns out the bag of cash -- which she tried to return to a nearby bank, only to discover it was closed -- contained $11,000 and belonged to a man in his 60s who had just moved to the area.

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Whitesides discovered this when she went to the police station and they later tracked down the owner.

"I told them, 'I think I just found $30,000,' and the look on their faces were priceless," she says of the two officers at the station.

Whitesides is just one of many Good Samaritans who have made headlines recently for turning in a large sum of money.

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Last November, a Rabbi returned $98,000 cash found in a desk he bought on Craigslist to teach his children a lesson about honesty.

But perhaps most impressively, last September a homeless man in Boston turned in a backpack with $42,000 in cheques and cash and was later rewarded by police.