Fishing on Lake of the Woods, the famous international lake that borders northern Minnesota and two Canadian provinces, Connor Halsa of Moorhead, Minnesota remembers the moment his line went tight. Expecting to pull out one of the lake’s famous walleyes, Connor and his cousin Brandon waited in anticipation for whatever was on the end of the line to break the surface of the water.
“I felt something on my line and I reeled it up,” he said. “I thought it was going to be a really big walleye — bigger than what we usually catch up there, by the way it felt,” Halsa said.
As the mass began to become visible through the water, Brandon manned the net and scooped out what looked to be a black, slimy mass. Once the catch was lifted onboard, the anglers quickly realized what they caught was without a heartbeat.
As the family gathered around to investigate, they realized what Connor had caught was a large wallet or billfold. As they scrubbed off the outside of the leather casing, they peered inside and discovered a few old credit cards, a drivers license and $2,000 in cash.
Shocked and amazed at what they had found, with only a driver’s license to go off, the family had no phone number to contact the rightful owner. As they continued to investigate, a business card that was somehow legible after being submerged for such a long time, was the only lead the family had.
The Halsa family knew they wanted to return the wallet and the money to the owner and thus set out on a wild goose chase to track him down.
The business card was from a cattle ranching operation in Wisconsin. After placing a call, a staff member offered to help. After searching records for the name on the driver’s license, she placed a call to Jim Denney, the man pictured on the sea-washed driver’s license.
It was in a Walmart parking lot that Denny took the call. The lady from the cattle company on the other end promptly asked him if he had taken any fishing trips lately.
“I told her I went fishing in Minnesota last year,” Denney said. “And I lost my billfold.”
After confirming that it was indeed Denney’s wallet that was missing, she passed along his phone number to the Halsa family who then reached out to make plans to return the wallet and the money he had lost at the bottom of the lake a year prior.
Denney insisted that the family keep the money, but the Halsa’s insisted on returning it to him. Denney decided that he would make the 8-hour trip to Moorhead to meet up with the family and take them out for a nice dinner as a reward for their kindness.
They all met at a Texas Roadhouse for dinner where Denney gifted a Yeti cooler to Connor complete with the family’s name wrapped across the top.
In a world where so many would have pocketed the money and thought nothing of it, Denney was delighted to know that there are still some good folks out there.
“He is the top of the line,” Denney said. “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 two families continue to stay in touch.
