A fanny pack, $30,000 inside, and one honest stranger

Luis Salazar walked into the bathroom of a Wawa convenience store in Riviera Beach, Florida, and found a fanny pack hanging from the handrail of a stall. He asked around the store first. When no one claimed it, he opened the pack looking for an ID and instead found several thick wads of cash totaling about $30,000. Salazar spent the next several days trying to find the owner. The owner eventually called Riviera Beach police to report the pack missing, and officers used store security footage to identify Salazar, who drove straight to the station when they called. "So, I give him his bag. 'This is yours.' And he was crying. And he hugged me," Salazar said. The owner, who asked not to be named, called it life-changing money. Salazar did not seem to find any of it complicated. "It's not my money to take. I was not raised that way."

Kindness is always free, said the ice cream lady

Madyson Silvagnoli runs an ice cream truck called Maddy's Ice Cream and More through the streets of Gardner, Massachusetts. Earlier this summer, a small boy walked up to the window and explained, teary-eyed, that he had "no dollars." Silvagnoli scooped him a cup anyway, added whipped cream and sprinkles, and told him he could always come back. "You want an ice cream from Maddy, you get an ice cream from Maddy," she said in a video later posted to Instagram. It was watched nine million times. The comments quickly turned practical. Strangers wanted to know how to pay for the next kid's cone. Silvagnoli set up something on her website called the No More Tears fund and a small merch line, both routing proceeds toward free cones for children who show up without pocket money. The tagline, lifted from the original caption, is kindness is always free. She told Today she has three daughters of her own.

She crocheted 100 blankets to thank the surgeon who saved her sight

Eliz Sandalls, who is registered blind, recently delivered her 100th handmade "wellbeing blanket" to the maternity unit at Bradford Royal Infirmary in England. Each blanket measures about two feet square and takes her nearly three days to complete by hand.

Sandalls lost sight in her right eye in 1987 and later developed serious problems with her remaining vision. In 2023, surgeon Helen Devonport at the same hospital performed an operation that preserved some of the sight in her left eye, enough for her to keep crocheting. The blankets are her way of saying thank you.

"Crocheting gives me something to do as I can't see to read books, and talking books tend to send me to sleep," she said.

Midwives Sophie Wainman and Katie Hurley recently surprised her at Abbeydale Residential Care Home with a hamper of treats and stayed more than an hour. Sandalls, who never had grandchildren, has no plans to stop. "Babies are not babies for long."

Her secret to 103 years. Don't complain, love people.

Dorothy Wilson is 103, lives at a senior facility in Connecticut, and would like it noted that seafood stew is her weakness. Wilson, known as Dottie, told Today that her secret to a long life is mostly other people. "My hobbies are people, because that's what I like the most," she said. "That's the best part of living." She exercises daily, dresses herself, plays bridge with friends, and reads on her Kindle, which she has figured out at an age when most technology has the decency to give up first. Her husband died in 2017 after 75 years of marriage. They raised four children together. Wilson said staying independent matters to her, and so does refusing to complain. "Nothing's easy, but it's not supposed to," she said. On her outlook, she was brief. "I feel good all the time. Why not? Doesn't do any good to complain."

Meet Splash, America's first search-and-recovery otter

Splash, a North American river otter, has become the country's first search-and-recovery otter, capable of holding his breath underwater for five minutes and tracking missing people by scent. He is the only working otter of his kind on record. River otters have dense whiskers that detect movement and chemical traces in water, which makes them unusually well suited to finding what divers cannot. Splash trains the way a cadaver dog trains, with repetition and reward, although he takes more breaks. His handler reports that he is enthusiastic, focused underwater, and easily distracted by fish on land. He has not yet been deployed on a live case. When he is, he will be the first of his kind to do the work.