A woman who thrifted a bag at a Goodwill in Texas got more than she bargained for when she opened it up to find something unexpected inside.
The U.S. is home to over 25,000 resale, consignment and not-for-profit resale shops, according to data compiled by Capital One Shopping. Jill Lawson Mandoza is based in Oklahoma City, but travels a lot for work. Though life on the road has its downsides, it has allowed her to frequent more thrift stores than the average bargain hunter.
It’s a situation that has seen her snag plenty of bargains in her time, as well as the odd surprise. A recent trip to a Goodwill in Katy, Texas, is a case in point. Mandoza thought she had eyed a bargain when she saw a leather bag gathering dust on the shelf there. “It was an old leather box style purse, no brand,” Mandoza told Newsweek. “The bag was $6.99.”
She thought little of purchasing the item, figuring at the very worst she could sell it on for a similar price or small profit online. But what seemed like a straight-up thrift store find took an interesting turn, however, when Mandoza took a closer look inside the bag.
That was when she discovered a pill. It was a Percocet, to be precise. A popular type of painkiller, only available on prescription, that combines the opioid oxycodone and acetaminophen.
The discovery caught Mandoza by surprise. “I found the pill while looking for imperfections on the interior. It was just at the bottom of the bag,” she said. “I was shocked because it was with a variety of bags, including little girls.”
Mandoza is at a loss to explain how the pill ended up being left in the bag. “A lot of people don’t really clean out their stuff before donating it, and these days it’s unusual for a narcotic to be in a blister pack, they [Goodwill staff] probably thought it was allergy medicine or something,” she said.
Eager to share her unexpected discovery, Mandoza posted a picture of the pill to Reddit under the handle u/FlowerDriver. “Would this be considered a haul?? Found in a bag at Goodwill,” she wrote alongside an image of the Percocet.
The post earned over 6,000 upvotes with fellow Redditors sharing stories of similar discoveries. “My grandmother once gave me a purse with a bottle of Valium inside, they were over 10 years old but still worked,” one user said. Another commented: “One time I found some methadone tablets in a jacket pocket. And then another time at a swap meet I found a full bottle of Trazodone in a jewelry box! Like wtf there were kids there so I flushed them.”
Elsewhere, one user offered an interesting theory about the likely origin of the pill. “Those are hospital Percocets,” they said. “I remember giving those out (I’m in healthcare, not like, at parties lol). Regular medications don’t come individually packaged with a barcode like that. Those were dispensed or stolen by a medical professional most likely.”
They added: “Typically a nurse would have taken them out of their package before giving them to a patient and put them in a med cup, so I’m guessing stolen by someone with access to hospital meds.”
Mandoza has not thrown the Percocet out just yet. “I haven’t done anything with the pill,” she said. The handbag, however, is already on eBay.
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