Man loses $1,300 in Publix lot; feels 'blessed' to get it back

CLEARWATER (FOX 13) - A Clearwater man thought he had lost $1,300 forever, but miraculously his luck turned around.

Two weeks ago, Chris Woods accidentally let $1,300 slip through his fingers.

"About as low as you can get, honestly. What do you do at that point? It was my fault," he said.

He had taken it out from one account and was going to put it in another. The money was in his pocket, sandwiched between his work phone and personal phone. He thinks when he grabbed one of those phones in the Publix parking lot, the cash fell out and he had no idea.

"We looked everywhere for it. I went everywhere and assumed it was gone," he recalled.

However, this is where the story takes a turn. Someone found the money and turned it in.

Then, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office tweeted a surveillance picture from the store, looking for the man in the photo. FOX 13 aired the clip Wednesday morning.

"This morning, my neighbor from across the street came over beating on the door and said, 'Chris you were on the news. They found your money,'" Woods said.

He says he will never forget this Fourth of July. In fact, he has 1,300 reasons to be thankful.

"There's good people in this world," Woods added. "[I'm] very blessed a good person found it."