A US man has praised the “good, honest” people of Utah after a wallet he left behind 39 years ago was returned to him in Pennsylvania.
Doug Schmitt, 57, left his wallet on the counter of a petrol station in Logan, Utah, in the spring of 1967.
The owner put the wallet in a drawer in the hope Mr Schmitt would come back to collect it.
Decades on, his son-in-law found it, tracked Mr Schmitt down on the internet and sent it to him.
Full head of hair
The wallet still contained $5 in cash and 8-cent airmail stamps. An equivalent stamp today costs 39 cents.
It held Mr Schmitt’s student identity card from Utah State University.
“I had a real full head of hair back then,” said Mr Schmitt.
He also found pictures of his high-school girlfriends and a dry-cleaning ticket in there.
“It makes me wonder if I still got some dry-cleaning out there,” he said. “I don’t know.”
Ted Nyman was clearing out his father-in-law’s estate when he came across the wallet and sent it 2,158 miles (3,472 km) across the US.
Wonderful
Mr Schmitt, an antiques dealer, said he was used to looking through people’s old relics and letters, but was surprised to find himself looking at his own history.
“I never thought I would be the object of something like this - not at this age, anyway,” he said.
“It’s wonderful that people will take the time to research that, then return something to someone they don’t even know,” his wife, Vickie, added.
“It’s great to see how he looked when he was a freshman in college.”
