I remember doing this once for a young woman. I was eyeing her in the store while I was shopping, mainly due to the fact she was always looking at items on the shelf and at, what I assumed, a couple of pages of coupons. I kind of just felt bad for the poor woman, having to revolve her entire shopping around couponing.
Anywho, I finish up my shopping, get through checkout and head out to the parking lot. Lo and behold, coupon lady parked in a grey compact car, was unloading her groceries into the back of the trunk, right next to my car. I saw her place a few things on top of her roof and didn't think much of it. I went oblivious to texting away to something nonsensical on my phone. I take another glance to see if she's still there, but she's gone. For whatever reason, I decided to get out of my car and double check my groceries. Maybe I thought I forget something or maybe I just have bad memory and can't remember actually putting jeans or something in the bag. Next to me, I notice a cheap black purse. Unless that purse has been laying on its side the entire time underneath coupon lady, I was pretty sure it was hers. So I decide to toss the contents back inside and look for an ID. I also notice there's 400$ worth of cash in assorted bills. I found that a bit odd and maybe... she wouldn't mind if 50$ went missing, but my inner conscious was yelling against that. And so I made sure everything went back into place. Coincidentally she lived not 10 minutes away from where I lived so I didn't think it was that far of a drive to return this to her. I had nothing better to do.
I hop on my car and make the trip over. It was at that point, I realized how quick a city can change in 10 minutes apart from where I live. It went from nice, to alright, to sketchy real quick. The address was in a beat up apartment complex with some nice welcoming police cruisers camping the outside gates. Joy! /s
But I came this far and might as well make the entire trip through, so I follow a car in from behind and make my way over to her building. Her building was... less than ideal, to say the least. Loud, pretty sure a couple was having sex somewhere in there and a couple was smashing things against their walls, possibly hitting each other. Great place to raise kids, really. I walk up to the second floor and knock on the door.
Rustling is heard and I can only imagine someone scrambling in panic on the opposite side of it. The door opens up and that same young woman opens up. Her eyes are really damn red. She definitely was in the middle of crying and couldn't keep herself composed at all. She barely audibled out a "can I help you?"
I was a bit taken back, but I didn't say anything. All I did was raise the purse to her eye level and her eyes exploded. She lunged inside the purse and pulled out the cash, and she just collapsed and repeating, "thank you! thank you! thank you!" Right in the moment where this story never took place, I placed my hand on her shoulder and told her to take care. Never saw her again.