A wallet stolen over two decades ago has finally been returned to its owner -- and although the money inside it is gone, it contains items far more precious.
Jeri Cox Chastain of South Carolina was a single mother working two jobs when the wallet was stolen in 1990, NBC reported. Money was scarce at the time, but what was truly irreplaceable were a few photos of her then 5-year-old son.
"There was one in there of him and I when he was 3 months old," she told NBC. "I don't have any other copies of that one."
The 52-year-old is now a business owner and still lives in the same town of Reidville, S.C. She received a call about the lost wallet from a neighboring city's police department on Wednesday.
"'I have a blast from your past,'" she remembered the officer saying in her recount to NBC. "'I'm holding your navy blue--' and I said, 'My wallet.' And he said, 'Yes, ma'am, your wallet.'"
According to NBC affiliate WYFF, the wallet had been discovered in the ceiling of a woman's restroom in a building not far from the hospital where Chastain used to work. She reclaimed it from the Spartanburg police station on Thursday and found that it was still in great shape.
"It's in perfect condition. The pictures are perfect," she told NBC. In addition to the pictures, Chastain found her old driver's license, social security cards, and her son's birth certificate.
"Somebody not so good took it and somebody really good gave it back," she said.
Hers is not the only extraordinary story of recovering an item from the past. Last month, a thief returned money stolen 30 years ago from a Michigan store.
Last year, an Ohio shop-lifter also sent an apology note along with a $1,000 money order to a Cincinnati Kmart 30 years after his crime.
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