Late Soldier's Lost Bracelet Returned To His Family, Thanks To Facebook And Fate

Bill and Yasmine Todhunter were walking their dogs on the beach in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., when they first saw the bracelet.

Engraved on it were the names of four soldiers who were killed in Iraq in 2009, according to Yasmine's Facebook post.

After realizing the bracelet belonged the one of the late soldier's families, the Todhunters set out to return it. On Saturday morning, they posted a picture of it to Facebook on a page they found dedicated to one of the soldiers, Joshua Tillery.

"Our freedom is not free. It costs (something)," Bill Todhunter told Local 10 News. "That's why we have to get this back to the owner."

By Monday morning, more than 118,000 people had shared the photograph, according to a Facebook update.

But fate stepped in, too.

DaLana Kelley Kunellis, the widow of one of the soldiers, Matthew Kelley, had just traveled from her home in Missouri to Fort Lauderdale for a vacation, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

While in Florida, Kunellis received a text from another soldier's widow, Karin Windorski Cruz, alerting her to the Facebook page. Kunellis then contacted her own family to see if anyone had lost their memorial bracelet -- her husband's brother said he'd lost his on a motorcycle trip two years earlier.

"It is almost like Matt is saying 'Hi,' like he's looking down on us," Kunellis told the paper, upon hearing the bracelet had been found. "And it helps with the pain on those days when you're wiping your kids' tears because they miss him so much."