While fishing at Lake of the Woods during the July 4th weekend, Connor Halsa, a young angler from Minnesota, came across an unexpected surprise.
Despite not having much success in catching walleye, Halsa managed to reel in a weathered brown wallet covered in moss and dirt. Fox News reported that the wallet had been underwater for almost a year.
“I was shocked,” Connor Halsa of Moorhead, Minnesota, said in an interview with Fox. “We were doing some walleye fishing and then going out to an island on Lake of the Woods.
“I felt something on my line and I reeled it up,” he continued. “I thought it was going to be a really big walleye — bigger than what we usually catch up there, by the way it felt.”
While he brought it in, his cousin Brandon prepared a net to assist in securing what seemed to be a sizable fish.
“At first I thought it could have been a fish, I guess, because it was brown and slimy,” the young fisherman explained about his unexpected catch.
After a more thorough examination, it was revealed that the wallet held a driver’s license, multiple credit cards, and an impressive sum of $2,000 in cash, as indicated in the report.
“Everyone started going through it to try to find the dude it belonged to,” Halsa said. “When we kind of got a general idea of what was inside, we put it in the console of the boat so it didn’t get blown out.”
With a strong resolve to reunite the wallet with its proper owner, Halsa and his family initiated a mission to find the individual, as detailed in the Fox report.
“It wasn’t my money,” Halsa explained.
Although the wallet had an identification card, direct contact details were absent. The report highlighted a significant breakthrough: a business card from Sherry, a cattle rancher in Wisconsin.
The wallet, it turns out, belonged to Jim Denney, a 75-year-old resident of Mount Ayr, Iowa. Denney vividly recalled the day he misplaced his wallet while fishing on the lake in July 2022.
“I reached back there and there’s no billfold,” Denney said. “I was devastated. I just didn’t know what the heck to do.”
“There I was, broke.”
After being informed about Halsa’s finding, Denney was taken aback.
“I said, ‘That’s impossible,’” Denney recalled, considering how long his wallet had been under water. Grateful for the young man’s honesty, Denney insisted on meeting the Halsa family in person.
“I told them, ‘I am coming to Minnesota to meet you folks because I’m going to take you out for the biggest supper you ever ate,’” Denney expressed.
As a way of showing his gratitude, Denney presented Halsa with a personalized Yeti cooler when they met.
“He is the top of the line,” Denney praised Halsa. “He said he knew I’d worked hard for my money. He and his dad both made that remark. They wanted to get it back to me.”
The unanticipated meeting has created a connection between the two households.
“They’re quite the family,” Denney declared. “I think we’ll stay in touch, no doubt.”
