Most Filipinos live on just a dollar or less a day, but 11-year-old boy Gicoven Abarquez who gathers discarded plastic bottles for money returned P18,000 or an equivalent to $400 USD that he found on the road.

Gicoven may be penniless, malnourished and has never owned a pair of shoes, but temptation does not strip him of honesty. The boy, Gicoven Abarquez, did not even realize he was doing something short of heroic. He said he was simply following a basic virtue that his parents taught him: Don’t take what is not yours.

Gicoven works the streets of Dagupan City in northern Philippines to help his parents make ends meet. He is one of the thousands of Filipino boys, some barely in their teens, who go to school and also work collecting discarded plastic containers to sell back to recycling centers.

Walking along the street, Abarquez stumbled on a pouch sitting on Perez Boulevard. Inside, Abarquez found the loot. (about 18,000 PHP ($407 USD)).

However, according to reports, rather than keep the money, he returned the bag to police. For his honesty, the 4th grade student was honored by the Dagupan City Police.

“My mother taught us never to own anything that is not ours,” said Abarquez; the youngest of four children. His parents, Maria, a helper in a factory that makes fermented fish, and Benito, a construction worker, taught him well, he said. “We are really poor but I am proud that even if we have to eat just salt and rice, that we live in an honest way,”

says Gicoven’s mother.

“What was very impressive about this boy was that he never thought of owning the ‘manna,’ but immediately decided to turn it over to the police,” said police chief Dionicio Borromeo. “It’s really heartwarming because he has high trust in the police.”

He described the boy as “malnourished, and who looks like a five-year-old because of his small body frame.”

“If you see a Filipino like him, you will say, ‘There’s still hope in the Philippines after all’,” Borromeo said.

The downside: fake claimants have flocked to the police station. But Abarquez said he remembers the man who dropped the bag as he sped away in a vehicle.

Starting last Monday, police gave the true owner 60 days to claim the bag. If not, it would be rewarded to Abarquez.

The honest child has been showered by the police and grateful citizens. Kiwanis Club of Dagupeña and Metro Dagupan, said they will adopt the boy as scholar under “Edukasyon Mo, Sagot Ko,”

a program being implemented by the Police Regional Office 1 for underprivileged pupils.

Borromeo said they will give Abarquez on Thursday a uniform and school bag while the Kiwanis Club of Dagupeña will give him books and vitamins. uniforms and most importantly, shoes.

And so our faith and hope in our society, at the basic goodness of humanity as a whole, is renewed.

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