14-year-old Connor Halsa from Moorhead, Minnesota was fishing with his family at Lake of the Woods, A huge lake straddling the US-Canadian border.
“We were taking a cruise, so we parked the boat, put in some spinners, and let the waves take us.”
He got something stuck in twenty feet of water.
said Connor, who was just starting out His freshman year at Moorhead High School, “I thought I had a huge fish, so I set the hook tight.”
What bound him was a wallet covered in mud.
“My cousin Brandon, he opened the wallet and he was like he said some words that you probably shouldn’t say, and then he said there’s some money in it, and he showed it to everyone, and then we took the money and put it all on the dashboard to let it dry.”
$2000 cash.
He knew, immediately and Instinctively, the next course of action.
Find the lost person and bring him back.
Inside the wallet was a barely legible business card belonging to Jim Denny, a farmer and rancher in Mount Airy, Iowa.
The previous year, the boat Jim was fishing in capsized, and although everyone was safe, he discovered that his wallet containing his vacation money was gone.
Thus the fishing trip ends.
“The water was so rough, I was sitting on the back of the boat there and the boat was rocking back and forth so good it must have come out of there and slid into the water.”
He didn’t even realize he was gone until he was paying the bill to the resort.
Money, cards, everything…poof.
“They had to float me money for the entire deal that I didn’t have, and it was the worst feeling I’ve ever had.”
On his first act, Connor crashes, which is surprising considering the lake 1,727 square miles… 85 miles long and 56 miles wide.
And the wallet is Four inches by three or so.
Of course Jim was gratefully surprised.
“The odds of finding a fold or getting stuck in 20 feet of water…I don’t think there’s a number,” Jim said.
He made the trip to Moorhead to meet the family in person, rather than have the wallet and contents mailed to him.
He wanted to be face to face with Connor when he offered him money as a thank you for keeping hope alive.
Connor rejected her Saying that he should not and cannot be rewarded for doing what is right.
“….We really didn’t work for that money. He did….”
Jim gave him a personal cooler and took the family out to dinner.
“To meet people like that, who are so honest, I tried to get them to take the money, but they wouldn’t,” Jim said.
“I’ll take Connor as a grandson any day, and I’ll fight for him any day.”
The ultimate compliment, actually.