Sumrall employee finds wallet with thousands of dollars, returns to owner

SUMRALL, Miss. (WDAM) - On July 7, Sumrall Police Chief Elsie Cowart received what she thought was a routine call about a lost wallet.

“We get a lot of wallets, especially here on the trail,” said Cowart. “They will get the wallets back, but not the money, and sometimes, not debit cards, credit cards and even identification. So that is very rare.”

An officer went to Ramey’s Marketplace to pick up the wallet, and inside was a badge along with more than $6,000.

Jennifer Sullivan is the employee who found the wallet sitting open by the register.

“I’m hoping anybody would have done the same thing,” said Sullivan.

“I went around there and turned it around to see the name. When I saw it was a lot of money, I took my hands off.”

Sullivan said she immediately found store manager Randy Bounds, and the pair began to think of a way to locate the wallet’s owner.

“We checked Facebook and everything we could,” said Bounds. “Come to find out, it was a man that lives here in Sumrall.”

Sumrall PD did not reveal the identity of the man for safety reasons, but Cowart praises the employee’s actions.

“In all of what’s going on in society, that person could have pocketed that money and not said a thing,” Cowart said. “She could have taken the money out; threw it in the garbage, but she chose to do what was right.”

For Sullivan, this isn’t her first time finding a large sum of money.

“Everybody tells me,” Sullivan said. “I found a lot of money one time at the hospital. They said ‘I wouldn’t have turned that in.’ I said, ‘If he didn’t die, he would have when he found out his money was gone.’”

Sullivan said that, in a small town like Sumrall, people have to look out for each other.

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