On the last day of vacation in Ocean City, Md., a rough surf separated Michael Chosky from a double Ziploc bag with more than $1,000 he thought he had secured in a Velcro pocket of his swim shorts.

He had kept the money with him because the hotel didn't have a safe and he previously had lost money he had kept in his room. This time, when he patted the pocket and it was flat, he said, "my breath went. It was a feeling akin to losing your child momentarily, like the wind got kicked out of you."

The next day, Aug. 15, 11-year-old Rowan Short of Wilmington, Del., was in the water about 15 street-blocks up the beach when she felt something on her foot and reached down to find the plastic bags full of money.

"It was a little Ziploc and a lot of money and I thought, 'What am I going to do?' because I didn't see the IDs at first," she said yesterday on the phone after her first day of 6th grade. "Then I saw the driver's license and thought about how bad he must be feeling."

Sitting on the beach with her breathless daughters, Rowan's mother, Kristin Short, called information on her cell phone, got the Choskys' number and called it.

Elaine and Michael Chosky returned home to Swisshelm Park with their 13-year-old daughter, Devon, and had gotten a few hours of sleep when the phone rang.

"I was surprised they were there," said Ms. Short. "When I was holding the stuff, I thought, 'I can't wait to tell them I've got it.' The joy of being able to do that was so much better than anything you could buy. What could you spend $1,000 on that would make you feel that good?"

"Trust me," said Mr. Chosky yesterday, "It was a joy at this end, too. It helped give me a little bit of faith back. It builds on itself, too. It's only been a week, but I have been looking at people a little differently."

He said the episode may make him think twice about what to take to the beach "and maybe go a little easy on the paranoia."

A few years ago, Mr. Chosky had "a decent amount of money" stolen at a resort in Florida and has since resisted leaving valuables in a room. The hotel in Ocean City did not have a safe, he said, so he secured $1,070 in cash, two credit cards and his driver's license in a Ziploc and put it in another Ziploc.

When Elaine Chosky wrote a letter of gratitude, telling readers of the Wilmington News Journal about the honorable family in their midst, the Shorts found out that the media love stories about honorable acts across the miles.

The Shorts have given several newspaper interviews and were expecting a TV news crew last night.

"One photographer said it was going to be on the front page of the paper," said Ms. Short. "Our knees buckled when we saw our daughter on the front page beside our senator, Joe Biden" -- an honest kid and the Democratic vice presidential nominee.

"I didn't think it was going to be this big," said Rowan. "My teachers all said they're so proud of me. Everybody saw the story." She said she's not used to being in the spotlight.

"A couple of kids said they might have kept the money. I was like 'Well, I'm not that way. It's not my money.'"