She lifted the heavy cardboard cover with her thumb and forefinger and smelled the addictive scent that can only be found in old books — the pleasant musty smell of yellowed paper. But when her eyes fell onto the first page, she saw what had been done immediately. Someone had taken great care to hide something in this old book, and when she saw it, she almost fainted.
Retired school teacher Cathy McAllister was hard at work the day she found hidden treasure. She and 130 other volunteers were gearing up for the annual charity book sale hosted by Volunteer Nonprofit Service Association, Inc., In Phoenix, Arizona. The volunteers had their work cut out for them as they prepared for what is said to be the largest charity used-book sale in the Southwest.
The VNSA collects more than 600,000 used books from a variety of sources, many of which are local donors. Once donated, volunteers are tasked with the daunting job of sorting, cleaning, and pricing the books for the enormous event. If you have ever been to a book fair of this size, you can just imagine the preparation that goes into them. But nothing could have prepared Cathy for what she would find inside the cover of one particular donated book.
Cathy had been volunteering for the VNSA for 7 years, and had once again found herself sitting amid a tower of second-hand books that needed to be sorted. She began by looking at the book’s condition, publish date, and popularity. Unfortunately, there isn’t a great demand for hardcover books unless they are rare or first editions, so she was disappointed to see another copy of Edward Gibbon’s “The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire” in the pile. Little did she know, this was no ordinary book.
The book was battered and was one of four copies that she had already cleaned and priced for resale, so she knew there was probably only one thing for it, and placed it onto the trash pile. The books that were unsuitable for resale were destined to be pulped and repurposed. Although it pained her to imagine such a fate for a once-loved book, the organization simply didn’t have enough space to keep every book that was donated. But then, a little voice in the back of her mind interrupted her.
Maybe she could save this book from such an unjust fate, she thought as she lifted it off the pile again. She decided to leaf through the pages and see if they were as damaged as the cover. Perhaps she had been too hasty in her decision. She was an avid book-lover herself and she couldn’t bear to toss out a perfectly readable book. Luckily, her second look wouldn’t go unrewarded.
She gently opened the thick cardboard cover and readied her fingers to fan the pages so she could quickly assess their condition, but she was surprised to see that there was something else hidden inside the ordinary-looking book. Someone had committed something so sacrilegious and scandalous to any book-lover that beads of sweat started to form on her forehead.
Someone had taken an X-Acto knife to the pages of the book and had cut out a neat rectangle. Where the pages should have been, there was only an empty space. But it was what was inside that space that made Cathy take a double-take. Someone had made a clever hidey-hole for hiding secrets away from prying eyes.
“I had the book in my hands,” Cathy said in an interview. “I was ready to toss it because we had several copies already…but when I fanned that book out, there’s a big hole carved out in the book amongst the pages…” there was a flash of green, and at first she thought that maybe the whole thing was a practical joke.
Cathy’s first thought was that someone had hidden Monopoly money inside the cavity, but she soon realized that inside the hollowed-out book were wads of cold hard cash. She lifted the bills out with shaking hands and began to count, and was floored by the amount. They were $100 bills, meticulously banded together in four stacks. But who had done such a thing?
Cathy counted a total of $4000, and she couldn’t believe her eyes. Her first thought was, “Wow. This is enough money to fund a supplemental charity.” Then, she realized that she had a tough decision to make. After all, $4000 is a large amount of money. If she put that money toward the charity she had supported so faithfully for the last 7 years it could make a huge difference. What would you do?
But Cathy knew there was only one thing to do. “My values were grounded in our faith. The church taught us what was right and wrong. It just becomes who you are after a while,” she explained. So, even though the money could be used for good, she never even considered keeping it. But how would she find the money’s rightful owner?
Luckily, “The Decline And Fall Of The Roman Empire” didn’t only contain cash in its cavity. There was also a letter addressed to the previous owner stashed inside. But with only a name to go on, she had a difficult task ahead of her. That’s when she noticed a crucial detail about the last name on the letter.
The name of the book’s owner was rather unusual, and Cathy used this to her advantage. She fired up Google and performed a search, and found what she had been looking for in just 10 minutes. It turned out that the money belonged to a man and his daughter, so she called them up with the good news.
After managing to get in touch with the owner’s son-in-law, Cathy asked them to meet her at the warehouse so she could return their money. She would have delivered it personally, but she was simply too busy with the preparations for the much-anticipated book fair. She was surprised and slightly amused to hear that the man who had painstakingly hidden his savings in the old book hadn’t even remembered that he had hidden it there!
The family was so grateful to get the cash back that they decided to donate a large part of it to the Volunteer Nonprofit Service Association in a display of gratitude. They were in awe of Cathy’s unhesitating willingness to track them down and return the money. Soon, news of Cathy’s honesty had spread across the town.
Cathy became an internet sensation overnight, but her fans had only one question that they wanted an answer to. They simply couldn’t believe that she wouldn’t want to keep the money for herself. After all, not many people would have gone to the lengths Cathy did to ensure the cash’s safe return to its owner.
Every time Cathy was asked why she didn’t just keep the money for herself, or, more nobly, give it to the charity, she replied nonchalantly: “I don’t know how you would sleep at night.” To Cathy, the thought of dishonestly keeping $4000 in cash that wasn’t hers was simply unthinkable. She certainly has an unwavering sense of morality!
On February 9, 2019, the doors to the VNSA book fair officially opened, to the delight of book lovers all over town. But Cathy and the other VNSA volunteers were curious to see how their customers behaved after the story of finding $4000 in cash inside an old book broke on local news stations. They expected to see a throng of people opening up every book they could find in hopes of getting lucky, too.
“I don’t think that anybody else will find $4000 in a book. But books are a great gift, with or without $4000,” Cathy explained, laughing. And the Volunteer Nonprofit Service Association continues to operate as it has for the last 63 years – supplying books to the general public at affordable prices and repurposing whatever they can’t sell.