Wallet returned to owner’s family – 60 years later
Two construction workers separated by 60 years in time -- and death -- had a meeting of sorts last month on a road project in Penticton.
Scott Walls, a pipelayer for Grizzly Excavating, was at work in early March on Skaha Lake Road near Galt Avenue when he discovered an old, leather wallet buried in the roadbed approximately one metre below the surface.
Walls took the wallet home, dried it out and found it was stamped inside with the name Roger Desfosses. Also inside was a credit card for a company called Arthur A. Voice Construction.
Using those two pieces of information, Walls took to Facebook and was eventually able to connect with Defosses’s son, Danny, and widow, Gisele, both of whom reside in the Edmonton area. Roger died in 2020 at the age of 85.
Defosses’ family drove out to Penticton last month to thank Walls personally.
“When I heard about it, I said to Danny: ‘We have to go. I have to meet that gentleman. We owe it to dad to go,” Gisele, 90, told CBC Radio in an interview Tuesday.
“I’m so thankful for all of this.
It’s so unusual.”
Gisele believes Roger lost the wallet when he was in Penticton around 1964 doing civil construction work – and she also believes Roger helped Walls find it.
“He was always a firm believer that you never leave a job undone. He always saw it to the end. And this is the ending of that job. His wallet was still there so he needed to get it,” said Gisele.
Walls, who has a knack for finding things on job sites, agrees.
“I think it was Roger using me to reach out to his family. I believe in that type of stuff. It didn’t just happen by chance that I found a wallet with a guy’s name on it. I mean, it’s me, I always find stuff,” said Walls in an interview Wednesday at the job site on Skaha Lake Road.
“At the end of the day, I just wanted to be nice. And, if it can encourage more people to do random acts of kindness, all the better.”
Just this week, Walls unearthed a promotional beverage cup from 1983 for “Star Wars: Return of the Jedi,” and his crews also found an old Budweiser sign amid a cache of empty bottles.
“They threw away a lot of stuff back in the day – just nothing with a name on it,” said Walls.
The project to which Walls is assigned is the creation of a new signalized traffic intersection at Skaha Lake Road and Galt Avenue.
Besides building the new intersection, crews are also upgrading underground utilities, burying overhead electrical lines and rehabilitating pavement.
The new intersection is meant to partially replace the so-called Point Intersection at Kinney Avenue and Skaha Lake Road that will be closed later this year.
Other work associated with the $10.5-million Point Intersection project, which began last year, includes the new traffic circle that connects Galt Avenue to South Main Street and Pineview Road.