A couple have been dubbed Good Samaritans, after finding and returning a bag which contained nearly $13,000 (£8,000) to its rightful owner.

Kenneth Allen, a Tennessee maths teacher, and his wife, Kristy Allen, discovered and returned the valuable loot without a second thought. As the couple stood in a shop, they discovered an abandoned bag sitting on a bin.

“I got my husband’s attention and I told him — I said, ‘Go look at that bag, it looks like a money bag,’” Kristy explained. They looked inside and discovered, among other things, $12,764 in cash and the driver’s license of a 51-year-old man were inside.

The man in question was hospitalised soon after leaving the shop, after suffering from side effects to his medication. He was seen acting strangely on the in-store CCTV before he left his bag on the bin.

Mr. Allen explained that there were plenty of opportunities for other people to have found it beforehand. He said: “For like 47 minutes I think it was, people were walking by. No one even noticed it, no one touched it, no one even seemed to see it there,” as he spoke to KATU.com.

After making the discovery, Kenneth’s first thought was to hand the bag over to the police, who since were able to track down its rightful owner. Mr. Allen is said to have spoken to the man – who wishes not to be named – over the phone and plans to eventually meet him in person too.

“He was grateful. He said I was one in a million,” Kenneth said as he recalled the conversation with the bag’s owner. While Mr. Allen could have put the money to use by paying back his taxes and student loans, he instead

Kenneth said in closing: “It’s the right thing to do and its just a shame that people now think that doing the right thing is extraordinary.”