If, however, Wheeler, 75, should ever change her mind, she won't need to shop for a bag. Her black suede clutch, with almost everything—Social Security card, family photos, four-cent stamps—in it, is back in her possession. Still missing: about $200 (about $1,200 today); nonetheless, says Wheeler, the purse "means a lot more to me now."
One of 11 children, Wheeler, a notions buyer at Woolworth's in downtown Oak Park, was having lunch with coworkers. During the meal, she went to the ladies' room, leaving the bag on the floor. "I came back," she says, "and it was gone."
Wheeler went home and got on with her life. Retired since 1993 and never married, she shares a three-bedroom apartment in Chicago's northwest side with her three sisters: Dorothy, 72, and Elsie, 71, also unwed, and Marie Kelly, 78, widowed since 1977.
It was Marie who answered the phone on Jan. 10 when Oak Park Police Sgt. Jacques Conway called. "I thought it was a scam," says Audrey. "But then I thought, 'Oh my God, he did find my purse!'"
Construction workers demolishing the building that housed Hasty Tasty discovered the pocketbook in the debris and turned it over to police. Using a state database, Conway tracked Wheeler down and reunited her with her purse, including, among its 30 photos, ones of parents Alma and Charles and her brother Bud during World War II. "The money she lost," says Sgt. Conway, "was nothing like getting those memories back."
Saved by the Bell Reunion
The hookups, the meltdowns, the memoires
The case reveals what was really going on what they think of each other now!
