Unemployed Man Returns Wallet--With $4,343 Inside : Lost and found: Matt Rayner thought of his and his father’s joblessness, then called the owner’s employer and took the money to the police.

Matt Rayner has been unemployed since graduating from Cal State Northridge last May, but on Tuesday night he suddenly had enough money to pay for a hoped-for family vacation to Australia or a ski trip to Aspen.

The money--$4,343 of it--was in a wallet in a jacket that the 27-year-old economics major found in a parking lot in Sylmar. In addition to his own joblessness, he thought of his father, Henry, a construction engineer who also has been unemployed because of the building slump and a recent hernia operation.

And then he gave the money back.

Rayner left a message with the employer of the jacket’s owner that he had found the wallet and would hand it over to the police.

On Wednesday, Juan Quevedo Hernandez, a truck driver for a Van Nuys roofing distributor, gratefully picked up the wallet at the Los Angeles Police Department’s Foothill station. After work, he dropped by Rayner’s house on Leach Street in Sylmar and gave him a $400 reward.

“Of course, I was tempted” to keep the cash, Rayner said from his house Wednesday evening. “But I thought, how would you like the outcome to be if you were on the other end?”

The first thing Quevedo said to Rayner was “Thank you!” And the first thing Rayner asked Quevedo was “So, were you worried last night?”

Quevedo admitted he was.

Duane Martinez, a co-worker of Quevedo’s at All Roofing & Building Materials Corp. on Raymer Street, said he took the 8 a.m. call from Rayner saying he had Quevedo’s wallet. “I asked Juan if he lost a wallet, and he said, ‘Yeah, I did.’ He couldn’t believe that all the money was there,” Martinez said.

“Not too many people would do that,” Martinez said.

Rayner, a former bicycle racing star who lives with his parents, said he found the jacket containing the wallet about 8:30 p.m. Tuesday after working out at Joe’s Gym at the corner of Gladstone Avenue and Hubbard Street in Sylmar.

“I was just walking to my car,” he said. “I opened the door and I saw the jacket laying there behind my car. I kicked it and I decided to look inside thinking that somebody had lost it.”

Rayner looked inside the wallet and saw about $40 in cash. Then he found a wad of bills totaling about $2,400 that appeared to be hidden in a pocket of the wallet. Later, he came upon an additional $1,900 in another part of the wallet.

Rayner also said the wallet contained four uncashed paychecks totaling $1,080. Also in the wallet were a work permit card and a resident alien card bearing Quevedo’s name, Rayner said.

Why Quevedo was walking around with so much cash remained a mystery Wednesday. Quevedo did not return phone calls to his work and home.

The large sum surprised Quevedo’s co-workers. “I asked him, ‘What are you doing with that kind of cash in your wallet?” Martinez said. “I couldn’t believe he was carrying that kind of money.”

Rayner said Quevedo told him the money belonged to his sister, but he did not elaborate. “I don’t know what he had the money for,” Rayner said.

Rayner, however, knows exactly what he will do with his $400 finder’s fee.

“I’ll pay for food, clothing and shelter,” he said.