7-Year-Old Who Found $8,000 at Playground Gets Sweet Reward

A play day turned into a payday for one 7-year-old boy who found $8,000 in cash at his local playground.

When Aiden Wright climbed up the slide at a Salem, Massachusetts park on Saturday morning, the second-grader spotted what he thought was a wallet — full of cash. When he brought it down “he was actually holding a checkbook with some personal documents and an envelope tucked into it,” the boy’s uncle, Danny Wright, wrote on Facebook. “I took it and peaked into the envelope and immediately told Aiden, ‘Buddy, were going to be learning a very important lesson today.’” The envelope contained stacks of $100 bills, totaling a whopping $8,000.
“He was thrilled,” Danny tells Yahoo Parenting. The duo took a couple of photos to commemorate the find then brought the booty promptly to the police station. “We talked about it and I said, ‘Ok, now we’re going to turn it in. It’s my duty as godfather to steer him right way.”

The police were as excited about the find as Aiden was. “The officer’s reaction, if I recall, was along the lines of, ‘Holy s—!’” Danny says. The police then took down the Wright’s contact information and sent them on their way. Twenty minutes later, the duo was summoned back because the checkbook owner had arrived and wanted to thank Aiden personally.

Turns out the owner, Elias Santos, had no idea that his money had slipped out of his pocket until police contacted him. Santos is a contractor and had taken his two children to the playground right after he was paid for a job.
“I am so grateful, you know, because we don’t have people like this [anymore],” Santos told WBZ. And the father showed Aiden his thanks by giving him a reward for his honesty: $100.

“I never made any mention to him of the possibility of a reward,” Danny tells Yahoo Parenting. “I thought it in my head but didn’t want to get his hopes up. And that wasn’t the point anyway. It was about him just doing the right thing. The lesson I want him to look back on when he’s older is the Golden Rule, to treat people the way you would want to be treated.”
Since then Aiden has become “very proud of what he’s done,” says the uncle, brother to Aiden’s single mom, Ellen Wright.
He’s excited to use his reward money too. “Every year I give him one ounce of silver coins so he’s planning on buying as many as he can with the money,” Danny tells Yahoo Parenting. “When he turns 18, hopefully he’ll have a nice stash of coins worth more than what they are now and he can do whatever he wants with them.”


But even before coming into his good fortune, the boy was already rich — in generous spirit. “He’s the nicest, gentlest, most caring kid,” Danny, who is saving all the clips about their discovery to show Aiden when he’s older, tells Yahoo Parenting. “He’ll get mad if you step on a spider.” The parting words he shared with Santos, in fact, were doting. After he and the contractor chatted and hugged at the police station, Danny brags, “The last thing Aiden said was, ‘Be careful going down the slide!’”