AN unemployed Filipina in Hong Kong returned to the owner HK$350,545 (US$45,231) in cash and checks she found in a garbage bin, Chinese-language media reported yesterday.

Every night, Mildred Perez, 38, rummages through garbage bins for soda cans, cardboard and other recyclables she can sell for HK$38 (US$4.9) on a good day in Yuen Long.

Poverty drove Perez and 126,000 others like her, to go to Hong Kong to work as a domestic helper, leaving behind her two children in Bambang, Nueva Visaya.

But her dream to build a decent life for her family was crushed when her employer, a pastor, sexually assaulted her in 2007. She lost her job and, being a complainant in a pending court case, is barred from working by Hong Kong law.

She has since been unable to support her family and her children were forced to drop out of school.

But on April 29, Perez found something that could have ended her misfortune.

After renewing her visa at the immigration department, she noticed a thick packet just slightly bigger than an airmail envelope in a garbage bin on the corner of Pottinger Street and Des Voeux Road.

Perez picked it up and handed it to her companion, a man identified only as David. He opened the packet to find cash and checks worth HK$350,545 inside.

They called the Hong Kong Information Center to get the number of the company named in the documents. Because it was after office hours, they left a message on a recorder, saying they had found the money and wished to return it to the owner.

Perez was given a tin of butter cookies as a token of gratitude by the owner and quietly resumed her life.

That is shocking!

I bet she will have a (choc) chip on her shoulder after that.