A man in Clovis spent over a year wondering where he left his jacket — and the $3,400 in cash in the pocket of that jacket after attending a Modesto Model A’s Swap Meet event at the Stanislaus County Fairgrounds. That is until a Turlock High School custodian found it at the school and turned in the jacket and hefty wad of cash.

While cleaning a classroom, custodian Billy Lowe found a jacket in the trashcan and after rummaging through the pockets for some form of identification, he found hundreds of bills next to a deposit slip with a name and account number on it. Lowe promptly turned the items into the school's Maintenance Department, which submitted the items to the police. School Resource Officer Neil Raumann was able to match the mysterious item with a report filed in January 2013. As for how the jacket got into a THS classroom? That’s a mystery.

“A lot of the kids park cars or collect money at events at the fairgrounds so we think the owner may have left it on a barricade and one of the kids brought it back to the school thinking it was someone’s,” said Marie Peterson, Turlock High School principal.

After sitting in a classroom for over a year, the jacket was eventually tossed during some ‘spring cleaning’ until Lowe found it and reconnected its owner with his money. The grateful owner paid Lowe a reward to thank him for his honest actions. 

“This just shows what good character our employees have and Billy Lowe is definitely a name I am going to remember and connect with this great deed,” said Peterson.