SEQUIM — It was a 10-cent paperback book. One of many at an estate sale northwest of Sequim last Saturday. Carol Johnson picked it up, thinking she might buy it to resell at her furniture and collectibles store, The Stuff Brokers, near Port Angeles.
Johnson opened the book. About a third of the way into its pages she found 11 $100 bills.
She counted the cash. Then she looked for the person who was holding the sale.
“I just went up to him and gave it back,” said Johnson, 56.
“He was really thankful, and said, ‘Oh, my. Take whatever you want from the sale.”‘
Joe Smith held the estate sale — and was in the process of selling the house around it — to raise money for the care of his mother, who suffers from dementia. She went into a Port Townsend nursing home a month ago.
He remembered her having that $1,100. But it disappeared — until Saturday, when Johnson presented it to him.
“I thought, ‘There’s that money. She put it in a book,”‘ he said.
“It’s really something to (meet) someone who would do that,” said Smith, 64. “If everyone was that way, the world would be in good shape.”
He wasn’t sure what he’d do in Johnson’s position.
“I’d hate to have that challenge,” he said.
Though Johnson could have helped herself to a lot of free stuff from Smith’s sale, she didn’t.
“I got some baby clothing, a couple of Tupperware things, a few more books, a couple of potholders,” she said.
“And I did pay a dollar for a rug, because I wanted it. I would have felt funny taking it.”
Smith, however, gave Johnson a pair of wooden chairs for her store.
So why not haul off some more stock?
Johnson laughed at the question. “I couldn’t,” she said.
The paperback, however, did go with her.