Let's Say You Just Found $11,000 in Untraceable Cash on the Side of the Road...

Sherry Whitesides, a fourth-grade teacher, was doing nothing more spectacular last Sunday than simply driving with her 12-year-old son Alan.

All of a sudden they saw something fall from the car in front of them.

The driver didn't turn around to retrieve the item, "so my son and I pulled over and we got out," Whitesides told WBTV-TV in Charlotte, N.C.

On the side of the road, Whitesides and her son made a startling discovery.

Exactly 114 one hundred dollar bills.

Image source: WBTV-TV

"Eleven thousand dollars was a lot of money in 100 dollar bills," she told WBTV, adding that a bank bag had flown from the top of the car in front of them.

Alan understandably got some pretty big visions of what the cash could command:  "When he saw all this money he said, 'Wow, I could get a four-wheeler with this,'" Whitesides recalled.

But for the 20-year veteran teacher, there was only one plan for the cash.

"It wasn't mine, I didn't deserve it, I didn't do anything to get it." she told the station.

Sherry Whitesides (Image source: WBTV-TV)

So the 20-year veteran teacher and her boy took the $11,000 to the police department in Clover, which is just under 30 miles southwest of Charlotte.

"You still wonder, 'Is this really happening? Is this true? Is it make believe?'" asked Police Chief Randy Grice, adding to WBTV that he's still a little shocked that Whitesides turned it in — she didn't have to.

Grice said the money was nontraceable and the owner "probably would have never figured out where it went to."

But police managed to track down the owner of the cash because his driver's license and other paperwork were in the bank bag as well.

For Whitesides, she'll always have a valuable lesson to share with students at Cotton Belt Elementary School in York, N.C.

"I feel very richly blessed and it has nothing to do with my bank account."

CBS46 News

Featured image via WBTV-TV