“Once in a life time thing happened yesterday while I was working on a car,” said Chad Volk of LC Car Care in Lake Crystal, Minn. – around two hours outside of Minneapolis – in a July 1 Facebook post.
Volk’s headline-making discovery – a wallet – solved one man’s long-standing mystery and kicked off a heartwarming tale that extends from Michigan to Minnesota. It all started when Volk set to replace a set of cooling fans in a 2015 Ford Edge.
He said that he was just finishing up the job and went to install the airbox when he realized something was stuck there, inside the hood of the car. Volk pulled on the object and saw that it was a wallet. Inside there was even cash, cards and a license. With these items, Volk was able to do some detective work and determined that the wallet’s owner had worked for Ford in Michigan.
Soon after Volk’s discovery, a retired Michigan auto worker was surprised to see a Facebook message from a stranger. It was Volk, asking him if he lost his wallet a decade prior. After the two men messaged, Volk mailed the wallet off to Michigan, money and all intact.
“It restores your faith in humanity that people will say, ‘Hey, you lost this, I found this, I’m going to get it back to you,’” Richard Guilford, 56, of Petersburg, Mich., said this Thursday, according to the Associated Press.
According to the Mankato Free Press, the wallet fell out of Guilford’s shirt pocket while he was repairing the electrical system of the car during the 2014 Christmas season at a Ford garage in Wayne, Mich. At the time, he and his coworkers searched more 30 to 40 cars for it but eventually gave up. Last year, he retired from Ford after nearly 35 years, the missing wallet all but a memory.
Meanwhile, the Ford came to Lake Crystal in 2016, and Volk has been servicing it since then. However, he never knew the missing wallet was trapped inside.
“He looked for a few days for it,” said Volk. “Just crazy to think [it’s] been there this whole time,” he added.
Guilford was happy to see the $15 left in the tri-fold wallet, which itself was a gift from his sons. It also had $275 worth of Cabela’s gift cards inside, though he doubted they would still be usable.
“Cabela's, an outdoor retailer, said the $250 in gift cards remain valid, but it has offered to give him new cards anyway,” the Associated Press reported. “Guilford doesn’t know the status of a $25 card from Outback Steakhouse,” and the numbers on lotto tickets found in the wallet were faded.
He’s just amazed that the wallet was so protected in the car’s engine for 11 years, and that it made its way back to him with Volk’s help. Now, it’s part of the Guilford family lore.
“I’m going to put everything back in it and leave it just like it is, and it’s gonna sit at the house in the china cabinet and that’s for my kids,” said Guilford, a part-time auctioneer, per the AP. “They can tell my great-grandkids about it. We’re big into stories. I like tellin’ stories. That’s just who I am.”
“Can you imagine the odds?” Ford spokesperson Said Deep said.