A city cab driver is being praised for returning over $21,000 lost by a visitor from Italy.
Felicia Lettieri, who's 72, left her purse in a Manhattan taxi on Christmas Eve -- it contained traveling money for her and six relatives.
Police told them not to get their hopes up about finding it.
Even family members had no hope.
"Everybody said, 'This is New York. Forget about it. You lost everything,' " the woman's sister, Francesca Lettieri, 79, told Newsday.
The cabbie, Mukul Asaduzzaman, 28, drove about 50 miles, to a Long Island address he'd found in the purse. No one was home, so he left his phone number, and later returned with the money.
Lettieri's daughter, Maria Rosaria Falonga, told Newsday from Pompei, Italy that the cabbie also left a note.
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He told her: "Don't worry, Felicia. ... I'll keep it safe."
"When I was 5 years old, my mother told me, 'Be honest, work hard and you will raise your station,'" Asaduzzaman told the New York Post.
"If it wasn't for him, it would be a miserable vacation," said Francesca Lettieri, of Patchogue. "We really love what he did."
