It was so long ago that Nick Chowdhury isn’t even sure what year it was.
But around 1991, he went to the Comox pier and, with a fishing rod in hand, hopped down to the rock breakwater below to find a place to fish.
“And I had my wallet in my front pocket, and I thought it’s not comfortable walking like that climbing around on the rocks, and I don’t want to lose it, so I picked what I thought was a good safe looking spot that I could find again,” he told CHEK News.
But sometime later, he returned to get it after not catching any fish.
“And I came back and couldn’t find the spot,” said Chowdhury. “I looked for 30 minutes to an hour, and it was gone.”
He remembers being frustrated that his ID, status card, health card, video store cards, and Zellers card all had to be replaced.
Chowdhury says he returned a few times to look for it but never found it.
Then, flash forward over three decades to last Friday, when 14-year-old Jamie Lee was also fishing on the breakwater with friends.
As a sign of the changed times, one of them dropped a controller for their electric skateboard and as they searched among the rocks, Lee found Chowdhury’s long-lost wallet.
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“And we were all just digging, digging through the rocks, and I was moving rocks around, and I see this leather wallet,” said Lee. “It was down a few feet in a cavity.”
He gingerly opened the wallet and placed the cards inside on a flat rock.
“I saw the bank card and the date, and it expired in 1991 and something else in 1994, so I knew this wallet was lost years ago,” Lee added.
He told his dad right away and sent him photos.
“I was shocked just like Jamie was, so I did a bit of Googling and some internet sleuthing and was able to track him down and sent him a few messages,” said Bill Lee.
Chowdhury received the messages but wasn’t sure if they were real.
“It was a Facebook message and was from a guy I don’t know, I’m not friends with, and this just feels like a scam,” he said. “It says, ‘Hey, I think I’ve got something that belongs to you.’ But then he sends me the pictures and it all starts to make sense.”
They soon connect and Chowdhury gets his old wallet back. All those old cards that are a bit like going down memory lane are still inside and more or less intact.
“I never ever thought that someone would come across it again,” Chowdhury said. “It took me back for sure, you know. Who has video store membership cards anymore?”
He was surprised how his paper birth certificate, just slipped in a plastic folder, survived decades of storms and high tides.
The ‘Buxton Mellow Touch Cowhide’ wallet is now hard and crusty, but after 34 years, it’s back in his own hands.
READ ALSO: ‘I knew right away’: Woman who lost wallet off Tofino finds it washed up eight months later
Dean Stoltz
