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Yesterday was officially “Dave Talley Day” in Tempe, as declared by Mayor Hugh Hallman.
Talley, you may recall, returned a bag he found at Light Rail station to its proper owner, an ASU student.
The story wouldn’t be nearly as captivating if Talley weren’t homeless and the bag wasn’t full of cash ($3,300) — but it was, and Talley returned it anyway.
Like many, we were curious what an ASU student was doing walking around with a bag full of cash. The student, however, says he’d withdrawn the money the day he left it at the Light Rail stop to buy a car he’d found on Craigslist.
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After he returned the bag, Talley, who currently resides at a shelter run by the Tempe Community Action Agency, told the Arizona Republic “the reality set in that it wasn’t my money and it needed to be turned over.”
He went on to say “I could have done a lot of things with the money, but none of them would’ve been right.”
The weekend before he found the bag, his bicycle — his only means of transportation — needed to be fixed. That’s a major expense for a guy living on the streets, but Talley didn’t take a dime from the bag.
Since news of his good deed went viral, people have attempted to give him money directly. He’s rejected much of it — asking people to donate the money to the homeless shelter instead.
“Thank you for being a great model,” Hallman told Talley at a ceremony in his honor last night.
