Man Gives Away Shirt— With $8K in Pocket

Bob Hoffman meant well when he gave a pile of his old shirts to Goodwill
By Linda Hervieux,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 16, 2017 7:45 PM CST
Oops! Man Gives Away Shirt Stuffed With $8K
Linda Hoffman hugs Caitlin Mulvihill, the Goodwill worker who found the orange shirt.   (ABC7)

Always check your pockets. That's the message Bob Hoffman learned the hard way after his wife donated one of his old shirts—and $8,000 he had stuffed in a pocket. The man from Long Beach, Calif., was keeping the secret stash to surprise his wife, Linda, with a dream trip to Italy after he retired in 2018, the Orange County Register reports. For six years, Hoffman, 65, had been padding the wad, which he had kept in a bank account. He withdrew the cash earlier this month with the intention of helping out a relative who had fallen on hard times. In the meantime, he tucked in an envelope in the pocket of an orange shirt deep in his closet. Then he forgot about it until he had another $100 to contribute.

Hoffman remembered that two days earlier his wife was making a Goodwill run and he helpfully offered to donate a bunch of old shirts. In the pile was the cash-stuffed orange shirt. Hoffman confessed his botched romantic plan to his wife, and the pair raced to the charity shop. But there no trace of the shirt. "Bob is an extremely strong human being," Linda Hoffman tells the Register. "I don’t want to hurt his male ego ... but he was crying." They went home and prayed. The next morning at 7:30 a phone call restored their faith in humanity. A Goodwill worker searching the warehouse found a bin of men's shirts—including an orange one. The couple recovered the cash and offered a fat reward. Goodwill refused. The Hoffmanns compromised and footed a pizza party for the staff. "What touched our hearts the most is how honest they were," Linda Hoffman tells ABC 7. (More uplifting news stories.)

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