Rainwater Blackfoot’s childhood was not what one would call happy.
She was abandoned by her mother when she was just a baby, and her dad left her, too, when she was a little girl, putting her into foster care.
“He was telling me that he was having a happier life without me,” she told Inside Edition.
So, she learned to live her whole life without the parental support that many of us take for granted.
In fact, Blackfoot faced numerous difficulties growing up, but she managed to get through and overcome them, becoming stronger after every battle.
“There were many years where there was no food in the house,” she recalled. “I didn’t have electricity for months.”
At the age of 25, she lived in a public housing apartment in Brooklyn, and she was doing fine with her life, regardless of the hardship.
Little did she know, when Lisa Guerrero from Inside Edition rang her bell, that her life was about to change forever.
Not many people know that there’s about $49 billion in unclaimed funds waiting to be claimed, and that around $3 billion is returned to its rightful owners every year.
Official estimations indicate that one in ten people have unclaimed cash. That’s why local comptrollers do their best to return this money to its owners who are often facing financial difficulties. To those people, these unclaimed funds come as a divine gift.
Just like in the case of Rainwater Blackfoot, who had no idea that there was a significant amount of money that belonged to her.
Inside Edition, in collaboration with New York State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli, tracked down Blackfoot and worked together towards returning her the money that was owed to her.
“It really is a very deserving individual,” DiNapoli said of Blackfoot. “A young lady who was entitled to a significant sum of money.”
So, one day before her 25th birthday, Inside Edition representative Guerrero, accompanied by a gospel choir, arrived at Rainwater’s home to surprise her with the news.
When the young woman saw all these people waiting for her outside her home, she was shocked. When Guerrero told her that they had a surprise for her, she had no idea what was about to happen.
Moments later, she unwrapped her present, which was a huge check with the amount of $86,057 written on it. She couldn’t believe it.
“ Wow, that’s a lot of money!” she exclaimed, adding: ““I could never have imagined in a million years that all this money would be sitting for me!”
It appears that Blackfoot’s father, a telephone technician, who died of liver cancer in 2008, had left this amount in his savings bank account.
The young woman might have had a rough start in life, but this was a gift that would help her overcome the financial issues she was facing and move forward with confidence.
“It doesn’t matter where you come from or where you started, sometimes the ending is beautiful,” she said.
Watch the video below to see her be surprised with the life-changing check!
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