When three New York roommates discovered wads of cash hidden in their secondhand couch, they felt like they had won the lottery.

“You keep counting more and more money and you get excited, like Reese was thinking about buying a car for his mom and a boat,” said Lara Russo who, with her roommates Reese Werkhoven and Cally Guasti, found $41,000 hidden in the cushions of a couch they purchased from the Salavation Army.

However, their joy soon turned to guilt when they noticed a name written on one of the envelopes.

“The entitlement very quickly went away…Because we didn’t earn that money,” Ms Guasti told Gawker.com.

Tracking down the owner of the cash was a daunting task – there was a risk it could be drug money and the young students would be placing themselves at risk.

Thankfully, when they found the name in a phone book they discovered that the owner of the was an elderly woman who has mistakenly lost her life savings.

“She actually said something really beautiful like ‘This is my husband looking down on me and this was supposed to happen,'” Ms Guasti said.

The old lady refused to let her saviours walk away empty-handed, rewarding them with $1000.