A retired Michigan autoworker saw a message on Facebook from a stranger: “Did you lose your wallet years ago?” Richard Guilford couldn’t believe what he was reading. It turns out that he had, indeed, lost his wallet 11 years ago when he was working at the Ford factory in Wayne, Mich. It turns out that Guilford’s tri-fold leather wallet — stuffed with $15, a driver’s license, work ID, gift cards worth $275 and lottery tickets — turned up under the hood of a car in a repair shop in Lake Crystal, Minn. Mechanic Chad Volk had discovered the wallet sandwiched between the transmission and the air filter box of a 2015 Ford Edge with 151,000 miles on it. He explained that the filter box wouldn’t snap into place after a repair, so he worked with it a little bit and when he pulled it back out, the wallet was sitting on the ledge where it needed to snap down. It makes perfect sense, as Guilford was performing electrical work on a long line of new vehicles being assembled when he lost the wallet. He realized later that it had fallen out of his shirt pocket, but was sure he had lost it in his car. When a search of his car turned up nothing, he realized the wallet had probably fallen out into one of the cars on the assembly line he was working on. With the help of co-workers, Guilford searched 30-40 cars, but the wallet was nowhere to be found. Guilford, now 56, retired from Ford in 2024 after nearly 35 years. He had put the wallet out of his mind years ago, until he got the message from Volk. The men had a good laugh about how the wallet had gone through 11 years of rain and snow in Minnesota. Fortunately, Guilford’s gift cards from outdoors retailer Cabela’s remain valid, though the company has offered to give him new cards. He isn’t sure about the $25 gift card from Outback Steakhouse, but at this point he doesn’t care. Guilford said he comes from a long line of relatives who like to share stories. “I’m going to put everything back in the wallet 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. “They can tell my great-grandkids about it.”
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| Mechanic Chad Volk |
