Woman returns books to Philadelphia library after 30 years

July 28 (UPI) -- A Pennsylvania woman found a stack of books while cleaning out her childhood home and returned them to a Philadelphia library 30 years past their due date.

Alexis Azeff said she was cleaning out her childhood home in Berks County after her mother's recent death when she found a stack of books she had checked out from the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1992.

The books included The Bodies in the Bessledorf Hotel by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor and Loretta R. Sweeney, Where Are You? by Patricia Reilly Giff.

"I had them on the table staring me down for several weeks," Azeff told news website Billy Penn. "I just wanted to do the right thing."

Azeff took the books to the library's Parkway Central branch.

The library said in a Facebook post that Azeff was not charged for the books because the facility recently eliminated overdue fees.

Mary Westbrook, a children's librarian at the facility, said the books were no longer in the library's records. She said they were checked out before the library went digital in 1995.

"I told her they're not going to be added back to the system, and that she could keep them if she wanted," Westbrook said. "But she said she just wanted to right some wrongs."