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Christchurch girl Paige McLeod was shocked to receive $25,000 during a fundraiser selling pine cones for a school trip to China.
The Casebrook Intermediate pupil had already raised $3100 from the pine cones, and with an extra $200 from her mum, managed to cover the trip to Nanjing and Shanghai in October.
Paige, 11, came up with the idea of selling pine cones herself. She has spent the last three months collecting them from McLeans Island almost every weekend, then bagging, selling and delivering them with help from her parents.
The extra cash was a mystery to Paige and her mother, Kylie Phaup-Stephens, until Phaup-Stephens got a message on Facebook.
The money had been accidentally deposited into Paige’s account and was supposed to be an inheritance payment.
"It was crazy,” Phaub-Stephens said.
"I looked and saw the $25,000. I was like, ‘What the heck? Where has this come from?’”
The pair wondered whether the extra money was just an overly-generous donation.
"We've had so many people wanting to donate, but I was like, ‘surely not’.
So Paige and her mum flagged the mystery money with their bank, which then froze the cash.
"Then I got this random call on Facebook Messenger, and it was a lady going, ‘Is it your little girl that I've paid? Has she been selling pine cones? Has she got an ASB account?’
"She was in charge of distributing her mum's estate.
"She had written her brother's bank account number on a piece of paper and had it on her bedside table, but she'd picked up the bank account that she had used to pay for the pine cones a couple of weeks ago, thinking it was her brother's.”
Phaub-Stephens said Paige’s imagination did run wild for a time.
"Bless her, she did have a wish list. She was hoping for a new phone, and she was going to buy me a new car, and she was thinking, ‘Can we go on a family holiday?’
"But on the flip side of that coin, she was like, ‘Imagine if this was you, mum, imagine if this was somebody else’.
So the money was returned last Tuesday night, and in return for her honesty, Paige got a $50 reward from the woman when she was reunited with her deceased estate.
- By Raphael Franks