Panhandler Gets $86K for Returning Diamond Ring

Missouri woman raises money to thank homeless man
By Neal Colgrass,  Newser Staff
Posted Feb 23, 2013 3:28 PM CST
Panhandler Gets $86K for Returning Diamond Ring
Billy Ray Harris, a pandhandler in Kansas City, Missouri, who returned a woman's diamond ring.   (YouTube)

Honesty paid off for a panhandler in Missouri who found a diamond ring in his change cup—and gave it back to its owner, the Huffington Post reports. Sarah Darling was so grateful to have the ring again that she raised more than $86,000 to thank Billy Ray Harris for his good turn. "I'm not sure of how you ended up in your situation, but after what I witnessed you do, I am most definitely sure that you are a honest man with a good heart," wrote a donor of $1,000 on Harris' GiveForward page.

Darling has kept in touch with Harris and still tells others how much she's inspired by the homeless man in Kansas City. "Words cannot express how it feels to be a part of something like this,” added her husband on the GiveForward page. But Harris, the grandson of a reverend who raised him, says returning the ring was no big deal: "What I actually feel like is, what has the world come to when a person who returns something that doesn't belong to him and all this happens?" (More panhandler stories.)

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