Woman gets wallet back after 35 years

ALTON, Ill., May 10 (UPI) -- An Illinois woman says she is looking forward to showing her children what she looked like in 1973 now that a stolen wallet has been returned.

The wallet turned up in a toilet stall at Southern Illinois University, where Sandy Baumberger was once a student, the Alton Telegraph reported. Eric Wherly, a dental student who was not born when Baumberger's wallet was stolen, found it after a broken pipe caused a partial ceiling collapse.

Wherly tracked Baumberger down with some help from a friend in the FBI.

Baumberger has a lot of mementoes to show her children on Mother's Day -- old snapshots, swatches from her bridesmaids' dresses, her student ID and driver's license, even an old grocery list and part of a pack of Trident gum.

"I'll show them I was young and I had long hair," she said. "It will be fun."

Her husband, the Rev. Bruce Baumberger, said looking at the contents was like "opening a time capsule."

Baumberger said the wallet was stolen from her purse when she worked as a secretary in a dental building. The thief took the cash -- a few dollars -- and then secreted the wallet in a men's room in another campus building.