Wallet lost at Atlanta movie theater found 65 years later

Dec. 29 (UPI) -- Workers remodeling an Atlanta movie theater found something surprising behind a wall: a wallet that had been lost by a patron 65 years earlier.

A contractor found the old wallet behind a wall at the Plaza Theater and turned it over to the cinema's owner, Chris Escobar.

Escobar said the area where the wallet was found was likely a former lost and found area in a manager's office that had long-since been hidden by renovations.

"It was a portal back in time," Escobar told CNN of the wallet. "And then realizing that this has been missing from this family of real people who lived in this neighborhood for 65 years, imagine if we could find them."

Escobar did some research online and discovered the wallet's owner, Floy Culbreth, died at age 87 in 2005. But he was able to contact her daughter, Thea Culbreth Chamberlain, 71.

"I don't even know how to say how flabbergasted I was," Chamberlain told The Washington Post of the first time she held her mother's long-lost wallet. "And it took a while for it to sink in."

Chamberlain was only 6 years old when her mother lost the wallet in 1958. Its contents included old family photos, a library card and raffle tickets.

She said looking through the wallet brought memories of her mother "flooding back."

"She was in there," Chamberlain said. "I know it sounds kind of hokey, but she really was."