Middletown Boys, 10, Find Wallet With $100 Inside; Return To Owner

MIDDLETOWN, NJ — On Sept. 2, Middletown North football may have lost their non-conference season opener against Manalapan — but these two Middletown boys are the clear winners of the game.

That's because Justin Baeder and Derek Salayi, both 10, found a wallet under the bleachers at the game, and they immediately handed it into a school security guard — even though the wallet had about $100 cash inside.

This happened Friday evening, Sept. 2, said Justin's mom, Cheryl Baeder. She was sitting in the stands with Derek's mother, watching Middletown's first home game of the season.

"In the middle of the game, we heard an announcement come on, 'Did anyone lose a wallet?'" said the mom. "Later our sons came back from walking around, and told us they had found it. We were like, that was you?!"

Justin and Derek, both in the fifth grade at New Monmouth Elementary, are the best of friends. They go to school together in the morning and during the Friday night game, they were walking around together and exploring under the bleachers — "you know, trying to get away from us and act like the Moms weren't there," laughed Cheryl.

That's where the boys found the wallet. They opened it up and there looked to be about $100 inside.

Were they tempted to keep the cash? Did it even occur to the boys to keep the money?

"Um, what does occur mean?" asked Justin. "No," he said. "We didn't even think about it. We just knew we had to hand it in."

Instead, the young boys — hanging out on unfamiliar ground at the high school — looked for a familiar face: They found one in Mr. Rob, the New Monmouth security guard who was working security at the game that night.

Rob and High School North athletic manager Liz Keene made the announcement, and found the wallet's owner, who happened to be a former teacher in the Middletown school district. To thank the boys for their kindness, Keene treated the boys to some snacks from the concession stand.

Justin's mother Cheryl said she was beaming when she found out what her son had done.

"You try to raise good kids and then when they go off on their own and you hear they did the right thing like this, it just makes me so happy," she said.

Also, once New Monmouth principal Matthew Ferri heard what these two students had done, he made sure they were featured in the Middletown school district newsletter, which comes out every Friday. He also arranged to have them interviewed by the Middletown Patch. The Middletown school district could not confirm the exact amount of cash in the wallet, but did say it was "quite a bit of money inside."

"It was so refreshing to meet these two young men and to thank them for being such stand-up individuals," said North Athletic manager Keene.