On his way out of a service station, a 17-year-old spotted a thick bundle of notes on the ground. Minutes later, he handed the $3,500 straight to the counter — a split-second decision that brought a $1,000 reward, a job offer, and praise from thousands.
Josh Pache spotted a thick roll of bills outside The Fox’s Pantry near a service station on the Gold Coast of Australia. Without hesitation, he walked the $3,500 straight to the counter and left without giving his name.
The money belonged to Daniel McKellar, director of Coastal Demolitions, who had just collected payment for copper at a scrap metal yard. The bundle slipped from his pocket during a coffee stop. McKellar only discovered the loss when he arrived home.
“I freaked out that I had lost the money because I couldn’t find it in the car,” McKellar said.
When he called the service station, staff delivered startling news: a young man had already turned in the cash. McKellar reviewed security footage and was moved by what he saw.
He posted a clip on Instagram with a simple plea: “Can the internet do its magic & find the young fella, we want to thank him by giving him a reward of $1000.”
The next day, Josh’s mother Leanne recognized her son in the footage and reached out. McKellar praised the teen’s character. “It’s pretty rare to find the younger generation having a good moral compass and obviously knowing what to do, being the right thing to hand in the money,” he said. “For him to just not hesitate, take it straight to the counter and then walk off and not even leave his name, it’s pretty remarkable. He’s obviously been raised right.”
Josh met McKellar and accepted both the reward and an offer to work as a laborer with Coastal Demolitions after graduation. His mother told McKellar that “good deeds and good karma deserve to be rewarded with good things in life.”
Asked why he returned the money, Josh kept his answer simple. “It just didn’t feel right,” he told 7News. He plans to save for a utility vehicle and hopes to secure an apprenticeship.
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McKellar turned his relief into action. He donated the remaining $2,500 to a GoFundMe campaign for a Gold Coast father named Daniel who is fighting stage-four cancer. “I was never expecting the money back, I thought once I lost it … I was expecting someone to have taken it,” McKellar said. “I definitely had not expectation to get it back, so in my mind it was already gone so I’d rather donate that money to a good cause.”
He also launched a separate GoFundMe to help Josh save for his new vehicle, which has already raised more than $10,000AUD.
The story drew thousands of supportive comments online. One person wrote, “What a bloody legend.”
