How a Purse Lost in 1957 Made its Way Home

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

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