56-year-old retired autoworker gets Facebook message about wallet he lost 11 years earlier: ‘it was in the engine bay of a car’

AP Photo/Ryan SunA retired Michigan autoworker looked at a Facebook message after midnight from a stranger: Did you lose your wallet years ago? “If so,” a Minnesota man wrote, “it was in the engine bay of a car.” Richard Guilford couldn’t believe what he was reading on his phone — a decade-old mystery was remarkably solved

A Christmas gift from Guilford’s sons was suddenly a family treasure again. “Big Red,” as he was affectionately known at Ford Motor, was in awe. “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,'” Guilford said Thursday

The wallet was discovered in June by mechanic Chad Volk, sandwiched between the transmission and the air box of a 2015 Ford Edge with 151,000 miles on it. “Crazy,” Volk said

The box wouldn’t snap in place after a repair, he said, “so I messed around a little bit and then pulled it back out and the wallet was sitting on a little ledge where it needed to snap down

Guilford was working on the same car at a Ford factory in Wayne, Michigan

It was in a long line of new vehicles assembled elsewhere that needed extra electrical work before being shipped to dealers

Guilford realized later that his wallet had fallen out of his shirt pocket

He was certain he had lost it in a car, but figured it was on the floor of a Ford Flex, not an Edge, and certainly not in the engine

Guilford said he ed 30 to 40 cars, and his co-workers looked at dozens more, “just opening the doors up, looking under the seats, looking behind it.” “I can’t take too much time to look for this because I gotta work

I’m on the clock,” he recalled feeling. “No luck

He had put the wallet out of his mind long ago, until getting the message on Facebook, where his file said he had worked at Ford

Volk messaged a photo of the wallet and included the driver’s license. “Big Red” saw a younger version of himself with his red-tinged beard. “The amazing part to me was it was so tected,” Guilford said of the wallet as he also traced the car’s history. “Think this: 11 years, rain, snow

It was in Minnesota, for crying out loud

It was in Arizona when it was bought

Think how hot a transmission gets in Arizona driving down the road

That’s incredible.” Ford spokesperson Said Deep called it a “repair that’s right on the money,” adding: “Can you imagine the odds?” Cabela’s, an outdoor retailer, said the $250 in gift cards remain valid, but it has offered to give him new cards anyway

The numbers on the lottery tickets in the wallet faded long ago. “I’m going to put everything back in it and leave it just 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. “They can tell my great-grandkids it

We’re big into stories

That’s just who I am.” ___ Vancleave reported from Lake Crystal, Minnesota

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