New Orleans ? Trista Wright had an eventful spring break cleaning out hurricane-damaged homes.

The 19-year-old discovered more than $30,000 in the moldy plaster board and debris of a one-story home. “I started raking it out of the air conditioner vent. I thought it was garbage and I was going to shovel it up, but I bent down to pick it up, and it was a stack of $100 bills, and then more and more kept coming,” the 19-year-old said Tuesday.

Wright and fellow students notified the organizers of their church mission, who told the St. Bernard Parish Sheriff’s Office. The woman who owned the house, who has asked that she not be identified, was as shocked as Wright.

The homeowner said she suspects the money belonged to her father, who was wary of banks. The home had been in the family for generations, she said.