Tobias Shin and Andrew Yoon were walking on the street when they found $180 and a white Halloween mask scattered across the neighborhood. Turns out the cash -- plus about $40,000 more -- had been stolen just minutes earlier from a Bank of America down the street.
The boys say they were on their way to get lunch at Wahoo's Fish Taco about 12:30 p.m. Aug. 7 when they saw some $20 bills scattered on the ground.Instead pocketing the cash and blowing it on fish tacos, the guys handed over to Santa Clara County sheriff's deputies, along with the mask that detectives hope will connect two suspects to the bank robbery. Good kids.
"At first, we panicked," Tobias said. "We thought it belonged to unscrupulous people. Then we decided to see if anyone in the neighborhood lost it."
Elder said the boys knocked on doors to try to find the rightful owner, to no avail. The boys had no idea that just minutes before, two men wearing white Halloween masks had rushed into the bank, jumped over the counters, shouted at tellers and made off with $40,000 in less than 60 seconds. Police say the two ran outside and hopped over a fence. Along the way, they dropped wads of cash.
"Seems like their bag wasn't big enough," Elder said, noting that slightly more than $9,000 was recovered.
The two boys, along with friends Rodney Tang and Brandon Gong, both 16, bagged up the bills they found, headed to lunch, and discussed what to do with it. They passed the bank, and saw the swarms of sheriff's patrol cars, armed deputies, and yellow tape.
"We started to wonder if the money came from the bank," Tobias said.