After stopping to help a person in a broken-down car just after midnight on New Year's Day, an Auckland woman is heartbroken to discover her wallet - with $1900 inside - missing.
Only days before, Nicole, whose name has been changed at her request, had sold her car to help pay for some private medical treatment for her six-year-old son.
The cash was in her wallet when it went missing, leaving her sick at heart and unable to sleep.
"I have not eaten since that morning of New Year's Day, I'm finding it hard to sleep or to close my eyes, I'm shaking every time talking about it," she told 1 NEWS.
"I'm depressed that I had dropped it and I'm just finding it hard to just get by and to forget."
Nicole says she was coming home from New Year's celebrations with her sister, when she spotted a stationary car at the Te Atatū bridge.
The car had run out of gas so she helped the person inside the car push it to the side of the road.
The woman in the car was later picked up by a friend and taken to a petrol station, so Nicole headed off.
1 NEWS has chosen not to name the two women.
Nicole says when she got home at around 3am, she realised her wallet was missing. She contacted one of the women and was told she'd accidentally dropped it in the car.
But relief quickly turned to horror when the other woman said they'd tossed it out of the car while driving, when they realised it wasn't either of theirs.
"I got told stories after the stories, that's when I thought, 'Okay, call the police,' which I did not long after," Nicole says.
There was nearly $2000 in the missing wallet, Nicole says.
"I had also sold my car and what little savings we had to help for my son's skin," she says.
"We were referred by our GP to a clinic for his skin. It was private [treatment], that's our first choice - we didn't want to wait.
"Our son comes first and that's how we saw it as."
Nicole hopes her wallet can be found and returned, after her New Year's kindness went horribly wrong.
Police confirmed to 1 NEWS they are investigating the matter and have made "initial inquiries" so far.
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