Karla Doane of Ceres was sick with fear that she would never see the $1,400 cash that she just withdrew from the downtown Ceres branch of Wells Fargo Bank and now was missing.
The discovery of the missing cash came at the end of the business day.
"I prayed and prayed for trust that there are people that are good and kind and trustworthy in this world," said Doane. "That feeling of ickiness you know because that's a lot of money."
She retraced in her mind her steps to recall where the money could be. She didn't sleep well Tuesday night into Wednesday morning, unable to call the closed businesses she had visited after the bank until they opened on Wednesday.
Karla first called the bank, suggesting that they might have to review their surveillance video to see if she had been pickpocketed.
Then she called Ceres Drug Store where she had stopped to make a utility payment at the pay station there.
"Per any chance was there an envelope left that had a large amount of money in it? I don't know if I dropped it in there or not" asked Doane of the pharmacy over the phone.
"Yep, it's here," came the answer.
She had never been more relieved in her life to know that the funds - she cashed out an IRA after turning 65 - wasn't lost after all.
A longtime employee, Martha Magana, had found the envelope - it fell out of Karla's purse as she reached inside of it to pull out another item - on the counter Wednesday morning.
"I thought it was trash and then I felt there was something inside and there was - fourteen hundred dollars," said Magana. "I started thinking about what the person who lost it must have been feeling."
The 23-year Ceres resident thanked Martha profusely.
"It just really reinstalled my faith in knowing that there are trustworthy honest people in the world," said Doane. "It really made my heart feel good."
"These days, people don't want to trust anybody. I had to trust that somebody would find it and hand it in. Because if it's a dollar or something, nobody thinks anything of it but when it's that kind of money, it's like ooh, wow."
