A 92-year-old man used the power of social media to find a letterman jacket he had been wearing for nearly 70 years.
In October, Mal Osborn accidentally drove off with his jacket from the University of Maine on the roof of his car, reports the Bangor Daily News.
“It was a part of me because I’ve had it so long,” he told the local outlet. “It was a miracle that it stayed in the condition that it’s in. It wasn’t something that hung in the closet. I wore it.”
Osborn, who now lives in North Carolina, was on the track team at the school, which he attended from 1949 to 1952.
But his family wasn’t going to let him part with it after all those years.
His daughter, Beverly Amick, posted a photo to Facebook with an appeal for help in finding the jacket after retracing her dad’s steps didn’t reveal its location. “Our theory is that he put it on top of the car and got in the car and drove up the street to go to the local restaurant and it fell off his car into someone’s yard,” she said.
Her post was shared more than 1,000 times in four hours. Twenty-four hours later, the coat was found. On November 1, it was discovered in a leaf pile on someone’s lawn. The woman who made the discovery had a feeling she shouldn’t throw it out. After a trip to the dry cleaner, Osborn was reunited with his treasure last week.
“Today is the first day I didn’t wear it since I got it back,” he said. “I have to give credit to all these people being so kind.”
To pay the good deed forward, he volunteered to ring the Salvation Army bell this week.
“I’m awful glad I got it,” said Osborn. “I know there’s good people in the world, but this made me more aware of it.”