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Boy Scout J.R. Bouterse does the right thing by turning in wallet with $800 Posted by Tom Rademacher | The Grand Rapids Press April 29, 2008 05:53AM Categories: Breaking News, Top Photos Press Photo/T.J. HamiltonBoy Scout John Robert Bouterse, 11, found a wallet belonging to Jessica Cutler, of Wayland, in the parking lot of Open Door Reformed Church in Dorr. He was honored by the Michigan State Police, the Gerald R. Ford council and Jessica Cutler.

DORR -- When 11-year-old Boy Scout J.R. Bouterse discovered a wallet containing more than $800 peeking out from a melting mound of snow and debris, he heard at least two voices.

One asked, "Should I keep it?" The other wondered, "Should I go tell?"

The latter won out, when "after only a glimpse of a second, I ran to go get the adults."

But J.R. also acted on another impulse in addition to the one that rules our consciences.

Empathy.

"I knew exactly," J.R. says., "how she felt."

"She" in this case is Jessica Cutler, the 20-year-old manager of a Burger King on M-40 near Allegan. It was five or six months ago that she cashed two weeks' salary and stashed it in her wallet, planning to buy herself an aquarium.

Things tanked, however, after leaving a Dorr-area church with boyfriend Gabriel Grevenstuk, 24. She found she had her purse, but no wallet. Frantic, the two searched the vehicle, church and parking lot. Bottom line? Go fish.

Press Photo/Rex LarsenBoy Scout John Robert Bouterse, 11, is interviewed by a television crew."I work hard for my money," said Cutler, who puts in as many as 60 hours a week. "I was freaking out. I didn't know where it could have gone. We re-traced our steps that day and the next day.

"It was a lot of money to lose. I'm on my own, with my own bills to pay. I was definitely devastated."

Enter J.R. Just over a week ago, he was exiting a Boy Scout meeting at the same church -- Open Door Reformed -- and was reveling in a spirited game of Capture the Flag atop plowed mounds of old snow and grime.

"I got caught and had to go to jail," he said, "and I saw this shiny thing like a rock. I went to put it in my rock collection, and thought, 'Boy, what a neat rock.'"

As J.R. neared his find, he started digging, and "it started getting bigger and bigger."

Suddenly, it wasn't a rock, but a wallet, "with cash and receipts falling out of it."

It is not that he couldn't use the money. J.R. has a mess of hobbies outside of rock collecting, with one or two of them requiring an occasional outlay of cash.

He is saving right now, for instance, to buy a CB radio and has about $120 of the $129 needed to get "the one with everything that I want on it."

He is also into go-karting and says that with $800, he could have upgraded to new tires and a more powerful engine.

That he is not $800 richer at Jessica Cutler's expense is a feather in their son's cap, says mom Michelle Bouterse, 41. "We're just so proud of him. We can't say enough."

Michelle describes J.R. -- short for John Robert -- as "extremely mature and intelligent," the oldest of five children born to her and husband Robert, 43. Both work in engineering, a career path that interests J.R., who is a fifth-grader at Wayland's Pine Street Elementary School.

To reward J.R., state police from the Wayland post threw a pizza party Monday night, not only for their law-abiding hero, but all 30 Boy Scouts belonging to Troop 90.

To top things off, J.R. was surprised to come face-to-face with Jessica Cutler, so she could personally thank him for the wallet, returned to her by a law enforcement official.

"I can't believe someone would find a wallet with that much money in it and not take some," Cutler said. "A lot of people maybe wouldn't have done that same thing. I'm just glad he found it, and not someone else."

And glad she should be.

Because just a month prior to finding Cutler's wallet at the church, J.R. Bouterse was not a quarter-mile from that site, observing his younger siblings engaged in an Easter Egg Hunt at a neighborhood park.

By the time he returned home, he was, in the words of his mother, "very upset with himself."

J.R. had lost the wallet given to him last Christmas, and inside it, the $45 he received March 27 for his 11th birthday. It remains lost today.

So now you know how he felt to find not a rock last week, but someone else's treasure.