BOSTON -- Susan Clancy said she is thankful to a homeless man who found and returned her wallet after it was lost on a busy Boston street on Wednesday afternoon.

Clancy, 47, a labor and deliver nurse at South Shore Hospital, said she was in Boston Wednesday helping her daughter, Erin, 25, get ready for her upcoming wedding.

But Clancy's happy afternoon came to an abrupt end when she realized on her way home that her wallet was gone. She immediately knew it had fallen off her lap when she got out of a cab to give her daughter a hug. Frantically, she called her daughter to go back to the intersection to look for it.

"I was hoping it was there. It had my license, my debit card, credit cards, but no cash," she said.

But when Erin Clancy got back to the intersection, the wallet wasn't there. She asked a homeless man if he had seen a wallet, and he said he had. The man pulled the small wallet from his pocket, but he wouldn't give it to the woman right away.

"He said he couldn't just give it to her, and she wouldn't want him to do that if it was her wallet. So he asked for the name on the ID, and she told him my name," Susan Clancy said.

The man said he planned to turn the wallet and its contents in to a local shelter.

Erin Clancy gave the man all the cash she had -- $8.

Susan Clancy regrets not knowing the man's name, but said his honesty has changed the way she perceives people living on the street.