Boy Finds $5,000 In New Family Car, Gets To Keep $1,000 As Reward

PLAINFIELD, IN — Nine-year-old Landon Melvin earned his first $1,000 in a way that’s getting his family some national praise for showing honesty.

Young Landon was helping clean out the family car, a Chevy Suburban that the Melvins bought last September, when he found a package under one of the floor mats, the Plainfield, Indiana, boy told WRTV in Indianapolis. In it was $5,000 in cash and a number of checks that no one in his family had known about.

"I look at him and run inside. I go upstairs. I start calling my wife, 'Hey, babe, you got to check this out!'" Michael Melvin, Landon’s father, told WRTV. "And that's when we dump it on the bed and money falls over the bed."

It turns out the money belonged to a South Carolina family that previously owned the car. They had driven to Florida for a cruise a few years back, and forgot where they left the package that had the money, the WRTV report states.

The family that lost the money would only accept its return if the boy who found the $5,000 in the car would keep $1,000 of it as a reward, Michael Melvin told WRTV.

Landon said he doesn’t yet know what he will do with all the extra cash.

“It’s upstairs in my mom’s room,” he told WRTV.