When Madison White, her boyfriend and their two-year old daughter were leaving Paulding County for their first-ever vacation to Gulf Shores last June, she had their vacation money set aside in a special envelope. She told her boyfriend to put it in the car.

“He doesn’t remember putting it on the hood of my car, but that’s what happened,” she said. When they got to Gulf Shores, their money was gone. Their vacation was ruined.

The money ended up scattered all over Nathan Geyer’s yard.

“At first, I thought it was just trash,” Geyer recalled. But when he went out to pick up the yard, he realized that he’d recovered $1,900 in cash. For a brief moment, the young millworker admitted he was tempted to simply pocket the cash and perhaps put it toward his upcoming wedding.

“There were a few thoughts of, ‘Wow! I could use this for something!’ but….”

 But in the end, Geyer said realized he would be devastated if he had lost that kind of money. So he turned it in to the Paulding County Sheriff’s Office. Last week, White said there was a note on her front door asking her to contact the Sheriff’s Office. Afraid of bad news, she asked her mother to make the call.

Moments later, White said, her mother called her back.

“She said, ‘Are you sitting down? Madison, they found your money book!’ I just started bawling and crying, I was so happy,” White said. She was able to find Geyer’s address and thank him in person, giving him $100 for returning her money.

But Geyer said seeing the look on White’s face was reward enough.

“To see someone and know that I’d done something to help them out and see how happy it made them – I felt really good,” he said.

Geyer hopes to become a Paulding County deputy sheriff. Already, he has the attention of Sheriff Gary Gulledge, who said in a statement to WSB, “It takes a lot for a young man to turn in that amount of money this day in age, it renews my faith in the human spirit to know that there are still honest people left in the world.”