Little Leo Belnap loves nothing better than helping his mother put junk mail, credit card statements or other documents with personal information through the family’s shredding machine.
So when the two-year-old spotted a bundle of papers on the counter at their home in Salt Lake City he knew exactly what to do. He shredded them.
Only in this case it wasn’t a stack of worthless documents, it was an envelope filled with more than $1000 (£760) in bank notes that his parents had been saving up to pay for American football tickets.
"We realised it was gone the next day and started to search. We searched everywhere in our house and could not find it," Jackee Belnap told CBS News.
"I have a bin where I put junk mail and any files I want shredded and my son and I shred it when it gets full. I looked through that and then it made me think to look in the shredder."
The money was all there. If not exactly in mint condition.
"We were silent for about five minutes and just sorted money out and then I broke the silence and said, ‘this will make a great wedding story someday,’" said Jackee.
In all, the envelope contained $1060 that was supposed to go to her husband’s parents who had paid for University of Utah football season tickets. The envelope had been left on the counter to remind them to hand it over at the weekend.
She and her husband knew exactly who the culprit was.
"Leo had no idea he did anything wrong," she continued. "It felt unfair to get mad and he probably doesn’t even know what cash is as we use our credit card for almost everything."
There may yet be a happy ending. The family has been told they can send the shredded notes to the Department of the Treasury which reimburses tens of thousands of people every year for their mutilated currency – as much as $30 million in all.