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By Kathryn Bender, Star-Bulletin
Charles Monsell, 12, found $100 and turned it in -- much
to the relief of a worried mother of three missing her
emergency fund.

Honest lad
saves the day

Twelve-year-old Charles
Monsell IV finds $100 and
turns it in at the Hickam
base exchange

---

By Brett Alexander-Estes
Star-Bulletin

What would you do if you found five $20 bills on the floor of a store?

Twelve-year-old Charles Monsell IV did and momentarily toyed with the idea yesterday at Hickam Air Force Base Main Exchange:

"Should I put it in my pocket?"

But Charles quickly told his aunt Karen Jarred. He said, "When I heard what I said to myself, I didn't like it."

A nearby clerk led the way to the store's lost-and-found department, and Charles turned in the money.

Meanwhile, outside the exchange, Marcelle Francis had just realized that her emergency hurricane supply fund was missing.

"I was gonna die," said Francis, a mother of three.

Hurrying back into the exchange, Francis began retracing her steps to see where she might have dropped the wad of cash. She was buttonholing passing clerks when Charles noticed and walked over.

"Ma'am, I think I found your money and I turned it in to security," Charles told her.

Francis "grabbed (Charles) and hugged him and said, 'Oh my God, that's my grocery money!' " said Jarred.

"I felt good that she was relieved," said Charles, who will be a seventh-grader at Waialua Intermediate School.

"I got my money back," said Francis. She said she normally sees stories about "bad things that bad kids do," and felt Charles should be recognized for his good deed.

"I've never seen a kid that would turn in this kind of money," Francis said.

"Whoever raised this child really raised him right."