Workers doing renovations at an Ontario high school made an absolutely amazing discovery that sounds like something out of a movie. Behind a bathroom wall at Orchard Park Secondary School in Stoney Creek, they found a lost wallet belonging to a student who had attended the school over five decades earlier.
This incredible find has turned into a heartwarming time capsule story that proves you never know what history is hiding just out of sight.
The 51-Year-Old Mystery
On August 26, construction crews were taking down a bathroom area when they uncovered a wallet concealed behind the wall. Lorna MacQueen, a caretaker at the school, and her team quickly realized this wasn’t just old junk—it was a personal relic.
The wallet’s contents were a snapshot of life in 1974. Inside, they found:
- Student IDs and a driver’s license
- A social insurance card
- Photos of friends and family
- A Eurail transit pass
- A 35-cent ticket to a hockey game
All the items belonged to Tom Schopf, who was a 17-year-old student at the time. MacQueen’s team knew instantly that they had to find him.
“To find something like that and see things from before we were even born, it was pretty cool,” MacQueen said. “We thought, ‘We’ve got to find this guy and give it back to him.’”
A Trip Down “Amnesia Lane”
Using the power of social media, MacQueen and her team were successfully able to track down the now-67-year-old Tom Schopf on Facebook.
Initially, Schopf was skeptical. “I thought it was a prank,” he admitted, since the items they mentioned—like his social insurance card—were things he had already renewed years ago.
However, a quick visit to the school confirmed the unbelievable truth: it was his original lost wallet, a piece of his youth he had completely forgotten about losing.
“Flipping through the things in there, it was a trip down amnesia lane,” Schopf shared. The most meaningful content was a photo of his childhood home, a place his mother still lives. He promptly went to show her the found wallet, and they shared a good laugh looking through the old mementos.
How Did the Wallet Get Behind the Wall?
So, how does a wallet vanish for 51 years only to reappear behind a wall?
Schopf and MacQueen theorized that the most likely scenario occurred in the bathroom. Schopf probably dropped the wallet, and someone else found it. After taking any cash that was inside, that person likely tossed the wallet up into the ceiling tiles, where it eventually slipped down and became lodged behind the wall, only to be discovered during modern-day renovations.
This is not the first story of its kind! Schopf’s experience is similar to that of Sharon Day, a woman in West Virginia whose wallet was found in some duct work in 2022. She lost it at a high school dance in 1968, and it was returned to her after a 54-year absence when the old school building was being converted into apartments.
These long-lost treasures serve as a wonderful reminder that sometimes the past is closer than we think, just waiting to be rediscovered by the next generation.
