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One might expect young teenage boys who played on the playground not too long ago, could still believe in the old finders, keepers rule. That wasn’t the case on Tigertail Beach a few weeks ago when four teenage boys saw a small red object near the water’s edge.

“We all saw it at about the same time. I thought it was a mini Doritos bag ... We all guessed it was something different,” said Kyle Coenen.

Kyle, 18 of Franklin, Wis. was vacationing with his family and three friends from school, all of Franklin. Kyle, Brad Stankowski, 19, Jason Kaczkowski, 18, and Nathan Hammernik, 17 discovered at about the same time that the small red object was actually a wallet. A lucky wallet, they would soon discover.

Jan Coenen, Kyle’s mother, said she was somewhat surprised when the boys, who went to walk the beach on their own, returned in less than a half hour.

“They’re teenagers. I figured they’d be gone, looking for girls ... you know,” she said.

Instead, they found a wallet and were on a mission to find its owner, Dennis Greffe, 60 of Dekalb, Illinois.

“Nathan picked it up and I looked inside to find the I.D. We looked around to see if anyone was looking for it. We looked for a guy on the beach that looked like the guy on the license,” Kyle said.

There was hardly anyone around near Tigertail Beach that afternoon on March 24 the boys said.

“When we were walking back we looked inside again and realized how much was in there. We didn’t know exactly everything that was there. We just saw a lot of 100 and 50 dollar bills. They were soggy, so we didn’t want to take them back out because we might not be able to get them back in neatly,” Kyle said.

The boys admitted that keeping the wallet did “cross their minds.”

“We joked about it a little bit, but we all knew we would never feel good about it, never feel right,” Kyle said.

Once the four teens got back to Kyle’s mom, Jan Coenen, she helped track the rightful owner through her cell phone.

They called the bank on the back of one of Greffe’s credit cards and eventually left him a message on his home phone. A few hours later Greffe called back.

“I said, ‘sir, this is your lucky day.’ It was just the right timing for it to be these guys to find that wallet,” Jan Coenen said.

Greffe was shocked that the wallet was found.

“I thought it was gone forever,” he said.

Greffe was vacationing on Marco with his wife Lorraine. They took a charter fishing boat, Rich Russel Charters, on the Marco River, March 13. Greffe told the Marco Island Police Department he was sure the red nylon wallet with Velcro closure fell overboard due to the rough water conditions that day, likely to rest on the ocean floor or empty its contents before washing ashore.

He filed a police report listing the contents as $2,500 dollars in cash, an Illinois drivers license and three bank issued credit cards.

What he didn’t list, were the sentimental contents.

Greffe was in the service in 1966 and served in Vietnam. Before he left, his father gave him a $100 bill to make sure he could always get home.

Greffe kept that in his wallet for over 40 years as well as a couple $2 bills, which also were for luck. In addition to laminated photographs, which survived their 11 day voyage in the Gulf of Mexico, was a medallion. The medallion he kept for over 50 years, since he was a small boy. The coin came from a car stunt driving show and The Lord’s Prayer was written on the back.

Once the Coenen family and their friends returned home to Wisconsin, they shipped the wallet back to Greffe, registered and insured.

Jan Coenen said they weren’t going to take any risks once the wallet made it this far.

“It was almost a week since we found it. The day after Easter it was finally sent overnight, insured and tracked,” she said.

As for the finders, they really are keepers.

Greffe sent each boy a $100 bill, a $2 bill and a thank you note. He also sent the parents over $200 for their trouble.

“I tucked the $2 bill right in the back of my wallet, so if I ever lose it, hopefully I’ll be lucky enough to get mine back too,” Kyle said.