Lost wallet returned to West Virginia woman 54 years later

Dec. 30 (UPI) -- A West Virginia woman was reunited with her long-lost wallet after losing the item at a school dance nearly 55 years earlier.

Sharon Day said she was 16 years old when she lost her wallet at a Fayetteville High School dance in 1968, and never expected to see the item or its contents again.

The school closed permanently in 2019, and workers with New River Contracting said were surprised when a wallet fell out of some ductwork while they renovating the building to become apartments.

Bradley Scott, owner of the contracting company, said the duct had been bolted shut for decades and contained several other long-lost items.

"There was some old admission tickets to a boxing match and some other things that all fell out of there when we broke that loose and opened it up for the first time in 100 years," Scott told WVVA-TV.

Scott used social media to try to track down the wallet's owner.

"With all the wallet photos and names on the back of wallet photos, with a Social Security card in it, it was like, 'Well, I think we can actually find this person,'" he said.

Scott found Day after about a week of searching on Facebook.

"It's something that I never thought I would see," Day said.

She said she is planning to turn photos and other contents of her wallet into a scrapbook.