San Diego Union-Tribune (Sunday)
LOST IN THE 1960S, MEDICAL BRACELET BACK WITH OWNER
Ramona resident found it while hiking in Santa Ysabel
It has taken a few years, but a metal medical bracelet lost in the 1960s is back with its original owner.
Katie Mccarty, a Ramona resident, found the piece in October 2017 while hiking near the Inaja Park area of Santa Ysabel.
Mccarthy met the bracelet’s original owner, Suzy Loux, in early July, when Loux came to Ramona to pick up the piece. Loux, who lives in Julian, had no memories of her childhood bracelet.
Finding the bracelet might have been an accident, but Mccarthy has had a hobby of looking for such vintage treasures since she was a child. She often searches old dump sites in the hopes of finding unique pieces she can use in her art.
“I found it with a bunch of old 1950s- and 1960s-era trash, so I believed it was thrown out versus being lost,” Mccarty said.
The silver medical identification bracelet consisted of a small plate attached to an adjustable chain. The back of the plate was plain and the clasp still worked.
The plate was engraved with a name, Susanna Vendora, an address, a phone number without an area code and the words “Hard of Hearing.”
The bracelet had no zip code, which Mccarthy said was a major clue. “Zip codes became a thing in 1963, so it likely dated prior to that,” she said.
Mccarty believed the bracelet belonged to an elderly woman who might already have died.
“The bracelet was adultsized, not child-sized, and with the age of it, I kind of put it away and forgot about it for a few years,” she said.
But finding the owner remained on her “to do” list, and she recently decided to research it a bit more.
She tried several different ways to find the owner, including looking at old census records, searching through an ancestry site and posting on a local Ramona Facebook site.
Not finding any answers, she had better luck when she posted on a San Diego site for vintage collectors.
Someone responded right away with a comment that the name was spelled wrong, and then someone else commented the bracelet belonged to their sister.
When one of Suzy Loux’s sisters called to tell her someone had found her old bracelet, she couldn’t believe it. “I had totally forgotten about it and have no idea how it ended up in the area Katie found it,” Loux said.
She said her mother ordered the bracelet for her because she was going to special education classes for her hearing. Also, her hearing aid at the time required a special harness, with a battery that was worn around the chest and it was a lot for a child of just 4 or 5 years old.
Her father told her that the area where the bracelet was found was a dump site on his property used by area residents. Now the land is part of a park.
“My dad was amazed at how good a shape the bracelet was in,” Loux said. “It must be a really good bracelet, after all those years to still be hanging in there.”
Loux said her grandparents — both of whom passed away years ago in their 80s — lived in Santa Ysabel, as did her parents.
“My dad was raised here and lived here all his life. He went to school in Julian. We were raised here, too, and went to school in Julian, too,” Loux said, referring to herself, her two older sisters and younger brother.
However, the siblings didn’t move to Julian until around 1968.
Before that, they lived in Claremont while their father was building a family home for them in Santa Ysabel. Her mother passed away about 12 years ago.
Born in 1961, Loux said she was in third grade when the family returned to the backcountry.
“My grandmother used to drive me around the area pointing out the wildflowers and other things,” she said.
No one knows for sure if the bracelet was lost or deliberately thrown out, although the misspelled name might have been a clue.
“The bracelet says Susanna Vendora, but my name is Suzanna Vedova,” she said, adding she goes by her former married name of Loux. She’s been divorced for 20 years.
Loux has a sister in Wynola and her father still lives in Santa Ysabel.
Now that she has the bracelet again, she wants to show it off.
“I want to put it in a special box as a memory for my five grandchilden,” said Loux, who has four adult sons.
Ironically, Mccarty had similar plans for the bracelet if she had been unable to find its owner. “I like to create history art boxes, that’s kind of my thing. I love history so much, so I try to do boxes specific to Ramona,” said Mccarty, who often bases her creations on a historical Ramona event or theme, using only the stuff she finds locally.
Loux said she now has a piece of her history and a story to tell her family.