Selene San Felice at Capital Gazette details the unusual circumstance:
"The jewelry also pushes the Annapolis Salvation Army a bit further toward their goal. The charity has until Christmas Eve to raise the last $28,000 of their $120,000 goal.
Pearl Eldridge, the ringer who collected the donation, called the donor a “quiet spirit,” and said the woman told Eldridge the pieces were sentimental but had just been laying around.
Salvation Army’s policy when jewelry is found in red kettles is to put it in a safe for 30 days, Vincent said. But if a donor intentionally puts jewelry in and acknowledges it with the bell ringer, it’s considered donated.
Vincent doesn’t think the jewelry was stolen, but Salvation Army has policies for that too. If big donations are found to be stolen, Salvation Army arranges them to be returned.
“We do a bit of background digging before we sell everything off,” Vincent said.
This isn’t the only gold to appear in a red kettle recently. Over the weekend, a gold bar worth about $1,500 was put in a kettle outside a Kroger in Louisville, Kentucky, the Associated Press reported. An Austrian gold coin from 1915, estimated to be worth $1,500 to $1,700, was pushed through the donation slot of a red kettle at a Walmart in Shelby, North Carolina, on Black Friday, the Gaston Gazette reported."
Americans are the most generous people on earth.
