A Cape Breton woman is thanking the Good Samaritans who helped her chase down almost half of her $2,000 that blew away during Tuesday's windstorm.

Suzanne MacIntyre of River Bourgeois, N.S., said she withdrew $2,000 from a Port Hawkesbury bank to make a payment at another bank and stopped to run an errand at a nearby shopping centre. On her way back to her car, a sudden gust threw her off balance and upended her purse.

"That's when everything flew out and at first, maybe a couple or three seconds, I didn't realize that what I was seeing flying in the wind ... I was trying to stay upright and go towards the car ... and I thought, 'Wow, what a gust of wind! Look at those flyers or papers,' and after a couple of seconds, I went, 'Oh my God, that's my money,'" MacIntyre said.

Within seconds, the wind had blown the bills across the parking lot, over a nearby highway and into the woods, she said.

That's when a number of "wonderful" people scrambled to help her retrieve the cash.

Shelly Forgeron was one of those people.

Shelly Forgeron, left, her daughter Makayla, and Forgeron's nephew Dane (not pictured) helped collect MacIntyre's money. (Submitted by Shelly Forgeron)

She was sitting in her car in the Port Hawkesbury Shopping Centre parking lot with her 14-year-old daughter and six-year-old nephew. She saw MacIntyre reach into her pocket and then watched as it started "raining money."

Forgeron sprung into action.

She drove to the end of the parking lot and told the children to start collecting the money. She left her car and tried to snatch the woman's money out of the air.

"It just went, and it was just flying everywhere, and I was like, 'Oh my god, I'm going to get hit by a car just trying to get this woman her money,'" said Forgeron.

They collected some bills from puddles and from the woods across the highway, and handed them to MacIntyre.

Forgeron never learned MacIntyre's name, but said the woman seemed very distraught. Forgeron said the woman told her the money was her "entire paycheque."

'You wouldn't see that anywhere'

"It was cold. It was misty. It was blowing a gale," said MacIntyre.

"All of them just surrendered the money. Nobody even thought to keep anything for themselves."

MacIntyre said she regrets not getting their names, so she can thank them.

"You wouldn't see that anywhere," said MacIntyre. "I'm pretty sure it's because here I am in Cape Breton. Had this happened in a big city, you know, a lot of people would have felt they had a big windfall. No pun intended.

"They would have just picked it up and thought, 'Too bad for her. She must have a lot of money.' That would have been the wrong assumption."

Forgeron isn't done helping. She wants to give MacIntyre $200, and hopes others will do the same.

"I'm sure that she could really use that money. It was an unfortunate event that was out of her control."

$200 turned into RCMP

MacIntyre reported the loss to the RCMP.

An officer at the Port Hawkesbury detachment confirmed that a man has since turned in $200.

MacIntyre plans to go back out and search for the rest of the missing $950, but she's not holding out a lot of hope.

"It's probably blown right across the [Canso] Causeway by now," she said.