An 11-year-old Casper girl who thought she'd struck it lucky when she found a folded $100 bill outside a Walgreens instead opened it to find methamphetamine tucked inside, sending white powder across her hands, hair and her mother's van.
She was with her mother, Tiffany Marie Butt, on a Sunday run to pick up invitations for an upcoming birthday party. It was about 7:30 p.m. when the girl ran ahead toward the entrance of the Walgreens on southeast Wyoming Boulevard and bent down.
“I said, ‘Violet, don't grab that! Like, what is it? Don't grab it,’” Butt told Cowboy State Daily.
Her daughter looked closer.
“Mom, I think it's a $100 bill,” she said.
For a while, the discovery felt like a win.
“She was asking me, ‘Do I have to share it with my sisters?’” Butt said.
She considered turning it in at the store, but the bill was found outside and there was no obvious way to know who had dropped it.
Butt said the girl once found a wad of about $200 in the produce section of Albertsons on a previous occasion, and they eventually found an elderly man who had dropped it. He rewarded her with $20.
So after Sunday's Walgreens discovery, Butts thought it best to get a second opinion — they called Dad.
‘Am I Gonna Die?’
The bill wasn't laying flat. It was folded over and over into a small square.
As the girl began unfolding it, Butt remembers telling her, "You just got to be careful. Sometimes in these larger cities … people put drugs in there.”
Butt had seen news stories like the one she would soon be the subject of.
When her daughter opened the bill, “All of this, like, obviously white powdery crystal substance flew everywhere,” Butt said.
It got on her hands and into her hair and scattered around the van. Casper Fire-EMS later reported finding the substance also spilled on the girl's leg and inside the vehicle.
The coincidence of her mother's warning wasn't lost on her.
“She was just mortified because we were just talking about it,” Butt said.
Then her daughter looked at her.
“She goes, ‘Am I gonna die?’” Butt said. “‘What do I do next?’”
They headed straight back into Walgreens. Butt told a cashier what happened, and Violet was directed to the bathroom, where they thoroughly washed her hands.
Then Butt called the police.
A Casper police officer arrived first, Butt said, followed by an ambulance and Casper Fire-EMS.
Dispatch records show emergency crews were sent to the Walgreens at about 7:51 p.m. for a juvenile who had found currency with a white powder on it and had been exposed to the substance.
It Was Meth
The girl wasn't feeling sick.
Paramedics questioned her and Butt about whether she might have swallowed or inhaled any of the powder. Butt, a nurse, knew that simply touching an unknown substance wasn't her biggest concern.
“I knew that it wasn't going to just, like, absorb in her fingers,” Butt said. “My concern was … did it get in her mouth? Like, did she inhale any of it?”
Firefighters then went into the van and sampled the powder.
Casper Fire-EMS Deputy Chief Kevin Ross independently confirmed the department responded, and that crews encountered a juvenile who picked up a $100 bill and spilled a white substance on herself and inside the vehicle.
“The powder was field tested, and the results confirmed that the powder was methamphetamine,” Ross told Cowboy State Daily.
Police took the $100 bill, Butt said.
The girl remained well and didn't require a trip to the hospital.
“They were all super reassuring,” she said. “The police was great, and the fire truck was great, ambulance was great.”
Not The First Time
Butt said she has no idea whether someone intentionally left the folded $100 bill outside Walgreens or simply dropped it.
“If they see a folded-up $100 bill, I mean, you can't tell me that they're not going to pick that up,” she said.
In August, an 11-year-old boy in Daphne, Alabama, picked up a tightly folded dollar bill inside a Walmart and got white powder on his hands when he opened it. Daphne police said the substance tested positive for methamphetamine, but investigators found no evidence the money had been deliberately planted to hurt anyone.
Police reviewed store surveillance and said they believed the bill most likely had fallen from someone’s pocket or bag.
A tightly or unusually folded dollar bill can itself be an indicator that the money might be concealing drugs, because currency is sometimes folded into a makeshift packet to hold small amounts of powder or crystals, police say.
The way the money was folded might itself have been a warning sign. Law enforcement agencies elsewhere have cautioned that tightly or unusually folded currency can be used as a makeshift packet for powdered drugs.
In April, the Mathews County Sheriff’s Office in Virginia issued a public-safety warning after two tightly folded dollar bills found by a resident tested positive for cocaine. Authorities warned residents, particularly parents, to be cautious about handling suspiciously folded money.
That warning echoes one issued by the Perry County Sheriff’s Office in Tennessee after multiple folded bills containing methamphetamine and fentanyl were found in public places. The sheriff’s office urged people to use caution with “any folded money” they find and said the bills appeared to have been used as a “carrying pouch” for drugs.
In Casper, Fire-EMS Deputy Chief Kevin Ross said anyone who discovers an unknown powder should leave it undisturbed, isolate the area, decontaminate themselves if they have been exposed, and notify authorities.
Kolby Fedore can be reached at kolby@cowboystatedaily.com.
