Script: A fortune found in the sofa
Two flatmates made a surprising discovery when they furnish their new home.
Voice 1: Carol Worth and Janie Lee didn't know each other before they both started work on the same day at the same accountants firm in New York two years ago. They quickly became good friends and earlier this year they decided to share a flat together.
Voice 2: When the two girls moved into their flat, they didn't have much money to buy furniture. They combed the local second-hand and charity shops to get the stuff they needed for the flat. They bought a sofa from a charity shop.
Voice 1: They'd only been living in the flat for a week. One evening, Carol was sitting on the sofa doing some work, when she lost her pen down the back of the sofa. She began to feel around, and quickly realised that there was something else down there as well as her pen.
Voice 2: Carol pulled out an envelope with something inside. Then she pulled out another. Then another. And another. The envelopes were sealed with sticky tape, and each of them contained a thick wad of something.
Voice 1: Carol was dumbfounded when she opened the envelopes. Each one contained a hundred hundred-dollar notes. She called Janie who was cooking dinner in the kitchen. There was a name - Ann Dunbar -scribbled in pencil on one of the envelopes. The girls had no doubt about what they should do next.
Voice 2: "It wasn't our money," Carol explained. "We hadn't earned it. We had to make every effort to get the money back to the person it belonged to. The most valuable thing I'd ever found down a sofa was a ten cent coin. This money didn't belong to us and it was our duty to trace the owner if we could."
Voice 1: The following morning, the girls rang the office, explained what had happened, and their boss gave them them the morning off to try and sort things out.
Voice 2: The first thing Carol and Janie did was go to the charity shop where they'd bought the sofa. The manager kept a record of all the items that came into the shop and he quickly traced the person who had sent the sofa. It was a man. Definitely not "Ann Dunbar'.
Voice 1: But the shop manager phoned the man all the same. He asked him if the name 'Dunbar' meant anything to him. The man revealed that his mother was called 'Dunbar.' 'Ann Dunbar'. She didn't have the same surname as him because she had remarried.
Voice 2: The charity shop manager asked the man to come to the shop the following morning. It was important. He also called the police and asked for an officer to visit the shop at the same time. Carol and Janie agreed that it was time to involve the police.
Voice 1: And how did things turn out in the end? Very, very happily for Mrs Dunbar. Unknown to her, her son had sold of the sofa while she was in hospital for surgery. He wanted to surprise her with a new sofa when she got home.
Voice 2: Mrs Dunbar had gone to stay with her daughter when she left hospital, and was unaware that her sofa had been sold. When her son told her about the discovery of the stash of money, she almost fainted with shock and relief.
Voice 1: The old lady refused to explain why she had hidden the money down the back of the sofa. But she did agree that it had been a silly idea and she’d be more careful in the future.