Raffle ticket for a new 1959 Chevrolet; credit cards without magnetic stripe; family photos in black and white: All this untouched for decades and hidden behind a wall of toilets at the Plaza Theater, Atlanta.
65 years later, during renovations, workers discover a hidden space behind a ruined wall. Under a mountain of dust, in what was once a wardrobe, lies a wallet frozen in time.
Then the owner of the Plaza Theater, Chris Escobar, declared that he was determined to return the wallet to the family.
"It was a portal back in time," he told CNN. "And then I realized that all of this was missing from a family of real people who had lived in this neighborhood for 65 years, imagine if we could find them," he added.
The Plaza Theater, Atlanta's oldest movie theater and a cultural landmark, is home to all kinds of vintage items. Escobar recalled his team finding old popcorn ads, bottles of spirits that were no longer in fashion. But finding a wallet that hasn't been seen in half a century is something else," he shared.
The wallet is "full of history," Escobar said. This is what gives him a good starting point for finding his owner's family.
According to a document in the wallet, the owner was Floy Culbreth. But Escobar ran into his first problem - at the time, women were often called by their husband's name, so a search for Culbreth's name yielded few results.
Escobar enlists his wife, Nicole, whom he calls an "Internet sleuth," to find the owner of the wallet.
She managed to find the obituary of Roy Culbreth - Floy's husband. From there, the connection led them on the trail of children and grandchildren until they came across the website for the Culbreth Cup, a charity golf tournament for a cerebral palsy nonprofit organized by the family. They were then able to trace the family line back to Culbreth's daughter, Thea Chamberlain.
"I have long felt it a privilege to be able to oversee and manage such a place of historical value," Escobar said. "But to literally pass back family history. It's a great gift."
Chamberlain recounted that her mother was described as a great beauty and hot-tempered.
Calbreth was very involved in the community, teaching Sunday school and participating in the garden club, as well as her non-profit work helping people with cerebral palsy.
Thea even finds some of her own belongings in the wallet: A couple of insurance cards and a doctor's note. She is now 71 years old, but was only 6 years old when her mother lost the wallet.
"The trinkets in the wallet were definitely my mother's," the woman emphasized. She indicated that she could imagine her mother hoping to win the Chevrolet raffle or hiding the shopping cards.
"It was quite touching, a stream of memories came back in my mind and it seemed to bring my mother back," added the daughter.
The family gathered in November to collect the wallet and honor the memory of their grandparents.
"We had children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren with us. Several generations were there to restore this lost piece of family history," said Chris Escobar.
All the while, Chamberlain watched as two of her grandsons, ages 7 and 5, pored over receipts and photos, quizzing their parents on the history of the purse.
"They knew it was something precious. The moment was special," she emphasized. /BGNES
