Drug addict for 25 years finds $3000 in cash and takes it to police station

A BAG containing a staggering $3000 lying in a street was picked up by a man who had been struggling with drug addiction for 25 years. What he did next will surprise you.

Junkie finds $3000 in street

A BAG containing a staggering $3000 in cash is lying in a street and a hardened drug addict, who is in treatment, finds it. What happens next?

“I remember looking inside the bag and thinking ‘Wow that’s a lot of cash,” the addict, a man who wishes not to be named, toldNZ Stuff.

“But I knew I needed to do the right thing,” said the man, who is on a narcotics anonymous program and struggling to make ends meet living off government welfare.

The man, who lives in the town of Blenheim in Marlborough on New Zealand’s South Island, took it straight to Blenheim police station.

JOE HILDEBRAND: Who said honesty is the best policy?

HONESTY: Is this the best taxi driver in the world?

As he was reporting the lost cash, a woman came in to report to police that she had lost the bag of $3000 cash between her work and her bank.

“She was real happy. She couldn’t believe I had handed it in,” he said.

“It was hard, I wanted to keep it but I am in recovery and they teach you to be honest.”

The man has not touched drugs for 11 months after a 24-year addiction to methamphetamine but admitted things might have been different when he was a junkie.

“But I got sick of living that way, I had had enough of being high,” he said.

The woman who lost the cash gave the man $50 and he said he would put it towards registering his dog.

The recovering drug addict’s friend Alison Leoni told the Marlborough Express that she was “very proud” of him.

“He is a really thoughtful man,” she said.

“It must have taken a lot to hand it over. It goes to show he has obviously turned his life around.”