Skip to main content
Drizzle icon
87º

How a Purse Lost in 1957 Made its Way Home

(Inside Edition)

Elvis Presley was No. 1 on the charts when Ohio freshman Patti Rumfola's purse went missing at her high school in 1957.

Recommended Videos



Astoundingly, it was recently found more than 60 years later by a school custodian doing repairs and returned to the owner's children.

"I noticed there was like a little bag with a bunch of dust on it between the locker and the wall," Chas Pyle told Inside Edition. "With the amount of dirt and discoloration of the material, I knew it had been there for a little bit."

Inside the red patent leather purse was a green wallet with Rumfola's ID card. The school was able to contact her children and returned their late mother's purse to them. 

"It was a snapshot into a moment," said her son.

The bag had just about everything a 15-year-old girl would want back in 1957: a vintage Evening in Paris makeup compact, two tubes of lipstick, a sweet handwritten note from a friend and a piece of still-wrapped chewing gum

Rumfola passed away in 2013, but her daughter said revealing the purse's contents was like a show-and-tell for their mom. Each of her children took a wheat penny from the purse as a memento of her. 

They say she would have gotten a kick out of seeing her little red purse surface after all these years.

RELATED STORIES

82-Year-Old Woman Reunited With Purse She Lost in High School

Cannonball From Civil War Found Lodged in Missouri Tree

Lost Wedding Ring Found 27 Years After It Went Missing


Loading...

Recommended Videos