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Signal Mountain youth finds, returns wallet containing $11,900, credit cards, checks

Staff photo by Olivia Ross / Food City employee Seth Ricker poses for a photo outside the store on Signal Mountain Road on Tuesday. Ricker found a wallet last week with almost $12,000 in it and helped get it back to its owner. Staff photo by Olivia Ross / Food City employee Seth Ricker poses for a photo outside the store on Signal Mountain Road on Tuesday. Ricker found a wallet last week with almost $12,000 in it and helped get it back to its owner.

By Bob Gary June 25, 2024 3 min read

So you’re 16 years old, a month removed from seeing your truck explode and burn, and while you’re at work you find a wallet containing $11,900 in cash, multiple credit cards and blank checks.

What do you do? If you’re Seth Ricker, you pick up the wallet and immediately turn it over, intact, to your boss. The wallet’s owner got his property back the same day.

“Not really,” Ricker said Tuesday, via telephone, when asked if he’d hesitated before returning the wallet with the entirety of its contents. “I really didn’t know what to think, except (to wonder) why someone would bring $10,000 to a grocery store. He might have needed it for something important.”

Ricker said he was working Thursday at the Food City on Signal Mountain Road when he was sent to the parking lot to gather shopping carts. He said he found the wallet and gave it a quick look, after which he “zipped it up quick and ran inside.”