She was eager to show off her latest thrift store purchase to her daughter. Her daughter turned it over carefully as she admired it. Suddenly, she exclaimed, “There’s something inside!” They held it up to the flashlight and noticed something moving around. They knew they had to call the police.
Priscilla Bailey, a resident from Plymouth, Massachusetts, loved hunting for a good bargain. She could never resist going into a thrift store and would almost always find unique, interesting items at fairly low prices. On that particular day, as she was hanging out in her local thrift store, a blue heart-shaped glass ornament caught her eye.
The glass ornament was just lying on a display shelf alongside other blown glass items. Priscilla really enjoyed collecting glass ornaments, and this particular ornament was in her favorite color – blue. When she saw the price tag of only $2, she didn’t hesitate to buy it. Priscilla thought it would make a wonderful Christmas tree decoration, but soon she noticed something unusual about it.
When Priscilla returned home with her new purchase, she couldn’t wait to get a good look at it. She unwrapped it carefully and began to admire the metalwork around its mounting. The etched figure looked like angels or perhaps Vikings. She held the tiny item in hands, flipped it around as she examined it. But suddenly, she started to feel an odd sensation all over her body.
The blue heart looked hollow, but it felt heavier than she had expected. Priscilla peered closer and closer until her warm breath fogged up the glass. She couldn’t see anything inside, so she decided to ignore the odd heaviness of the ornament for the time being and hung it in her kitchen. It wasn’t until later when her daughter came by and examined it that she realized she had missed an important detail.
Priscilla’s daughter, Kat, also had a passion for glass art. Kat loved blown glass ornaments so much that she wanted to open her own blown glass store. Naturally, she was the perfect person to help shed some light on the trinket’s mystery.
Kate was so excited when her mom showed her the ornament. As soon as she took it from her mom, she realized that it was oddly heavy. There had to be something inside. She then fetched a flashlight to get a closer look. The light would soon reveal something unbelievable.
Through the light, Priscilla and Kat discovered that there were actually two golf ball-sized compartments hiding inside the heart. As Kat shook it a little, they both noticed something was moving in the smaller compartment. The mom-and-daughter duo called the police right away. Maybe whatever inside was dangerous or illegal. Meanwhile, Priscilla also called some journalists at the Boston Globe to see the mysterious $2 thrift store ornament.
It didn’t take long for the journalists to arrive, and Priscilla led them to her kitchen to explain everything. The reporters couldn’t believe that there was something moving inside the heart. Kat then took out the flashlight and shone it through the glass. Everyone held their breath, waiting to see the contents inside.
As they watched, they found something powdery moving in the hidden compartment. Kate told the reporters that it looked like it was ashes. All the others present were taken aback by the thought. However, if the ornament contained ashes inside, it would make sense why it was made with such stunning craftsmanship.
At first, Priscilla was horrified to think that she had a stranger’s ashes in her home and that she had shaken the ornament so many times. She wondered if she was disrespecting the ashes and if she should continue to keep the ornament. But soon, she felt empathy for the person whose ashes they were and his/her family members. Who did the ashes belong to? How did they end up in a thrift store? Hundreds of questions rushed into Priscilla’s mind, and she knew she had to do something.
Priscilla decided that she would do whatever she could to find the real owner. “It’s beautiful. It must have a story, so that’s my goal – to find out where and who this belongs to,” Kat told the reporters. She hoped that with the police notified and the media coverage, someone would get in touch with her. She even let Kat share her story on Facebook, and that was when things began to take a strange turn.
“Hey, friends! I am in desperate need of this post to go viral! My mom Priscilla Bailey bought this at Savers in Plymouth about 2 weeks ago. At first, we thought it was very unique until we got it home and realized it is full of ashes!!! We want to return it to the rightful owner,” Kat posted on Facebook along with a close-up photo of the blue glass ornament. Then the unexpected happened. Someone replied!
A local woman named Connie Slate commented on Kat’s post, “Please let me know what you find out as I also have one. I found mine at a thrift shop too! It’s heavy in weight.” And another woman replied that she had bought a similar one at a thrift store in the Pacific Northwest. “Mine was iridescent and heart-shaped like this one, but much less ornament and more suncatcher-like,” she said. Then she offered an important clue that made everyone gasp.
“It was made from the ash of Mt. Saint Helen,” the woman said. So, the glass heart was perhaps not an urn? Priscilla and Kat had believed it held a person’s ashes. They had never imagined the ashes originated from something else. But they still didn’t receive a confirmed answer. Well, the story is still going strong online. Hopefully, the secrets of the blue heart will reveal itself.
Keep reading for another story of discovering a mysterious ornament. You won’t believe how valuable it was and how far people would go to return it to its owner.
When Floria woman Ivelise Hernandez arrived at St. Petersburg-Clearwater Airport for a routine trip, she wasn’t expecting anything out of the ordinary. Her boyfriend Rico Bankston, who had driven her there, was accompanying her in the security line. Everything appeared calm, then suddenly, they noticed an old man being forced to abandon a package. What happened next, however, was nothing short of a modern-day miracle.
The man was trying to take his luggage through the metal detector, but one of the items inside was considered restricted. He argued with the security guards, trying desperately not to be parted from it. But they just coldly told him to toss the package into the nearest trash. The man was apparently very distraught, almost in tears. Ivelise knew she had to do something.
No matter how much the man pleaded with them, the security guards would not budge. His eyes welling up, he took the package and glumly dropped it into the trash. With great sadness, the man continued to board his flight. Finally, it was Ivelise’s turn to go through the security check. She gave Rico a hug and kiss goodbye, but also requested something highly unusual of him.
Ivelise told Rico to rummage through the trash bin and figure out what was in the package. She then went and boarded her flight. All the way, Ivelise felt shaken by the way the old man had been treated. She was also dying to know what he had thrown away. She could tell this was no ordinary package.
Rico, meanwhile, retrieved the mysterious parcel, then drove it home. When he unwrapped the package though, Rico only found an ordinary snow globe. It wasn’t anything that appeared so sketchy as to spark a huge debate. But when Rico looked more closely at the snow globe, he instantly understood just how valuable it really was.
It was a specially commissioned snow globe. Inside it were two photographs, one of a little girl, and one of an elderly couple. Underneath the snow globe was an engraving, reading: “We love you Katie. Nana and Papa 1/25/16”. After that, Rico and Ivelise knew immediately what they had to do with the package.
When Ivelise came back home, she and Rico decided to track down the owner. This special package had clearly meant a lot to the man who had been forced to throw it away, and to his family. Ivelise now had a mystery ahead to solve. But it seemed nearly impossible. How could they return something like this to someone with almost no clues whatsoever?
Ivelise wrote a post on her Facebook with as many details as possible, including pictures of the snow globe and its engraving, hoping her friends would help her pay it forward. It seemed to be the only thing the couple could do. Still, they were determined. Ivelise said she wanted to turn that man’s initial tears into tears of joy. But there was a problem.
Even as she wrote her post, Ivelise was aware that she didn’t have a very large Facebook network. She hoped that the post might get shared a few times. Thinking realistically though, the couple figured it would get capped at 200 shares maximum. But they were both dead wrong. What was about to happen next was totally beyond their imagination.
The couple had vastly underestimated the magic of the Internet. Ivelise’s well-intentioned post went amazingly viral. The post was rocketing through cyberspace at a dizzying pace and had now taken on a life of its own. Within just a week, it had been reposted more than 48,000 times! Still, it was a large country. Would that help the abandoned item return to its owner?
After a sea of shares, someone came forward with a message. It was an employee from a gift shop called Things Remembered. The employee had nothing to do with the snow globe, but she remembered that model. She sent the image back to company headquarters to see if they could pinpoint that specific order. What was about to happen next was nothing short of extraordinary.
The company headquarters located a name: Linda Modry. Linda had ordered the snow globe especially for her five-year-old granddaughter, Katie. Katie’s dad, Michael, was the man that Ivelise and Rico had seen at the airport. Ivelise and Rico were terribly excited and now they could close the cycle of kindness they had begun. But that wasn’t the last fantastic twist.
The shopkeeper from Things Remembered gave Ivelise the customer’s number. Linda Modry lived in their area! By this time, local news had caught wind of the story, and all were excited to capture the incredible moment of reunion. And Ivelise was about to learn how significant her act of righteous kindness was.
In the middle of a tropical Florida rainstorm, Linda came to Ivelise’s front door. The excitement was practically palpable. Nothing could feel quite as good as fulfilling a good deed. They were two women, connected by a simple object. The discarded package had meant a lot to its owner and its rescuer. Unsure of what to expect, Linda knocked on the door.
Brimming with joy, Ivelise opened the door. Almost instantly, the two fell into each other’s arms. As Linda offered Ivelise a lovely bouquet, Ivelise teared up, completely feeling the purest joy to fulfill an act of kindness and to solve the mystery of the discarded package finally. She was also about to learn that the snow globe meant so much more than she could have expected.
The birthday of Linda’s granddaughter’s was coming up. Getting a new snow globe engraved would be hard and timing. If Ivelise had not spoken up, and if Rico had not sifted through the airport trash bin, there would have been a lingering sense of disappointment at the little girl’s birthday. Fortunately, the special snow globe was finally back to its owner in good time.
Choking back emotions herself as she thanked Ivelise, Linda knew that her gratitude alone wasn’t enough to truly illustrate to the woman just how important her act of kindness had been. So Linda called her son, Michael. And Ivelise was about to learn the truth behind the date on the snow globe.
The date underneath the snow globe, January 25th, was not a birth date, but the date of Katie’s adoption. For Linda and her husband, the precious gift was not just a reminder of their love from grandparents to granddaughter, but a gesture of them affirming their adopted grandchild’s place in her new family and reminding her that each of them loved having her in their lives.
Linda held her phone out to the trembling Ivelise. Beaming with happiness, Ivelise heard that little Katie herself had joined in on the conversation! Nothing could have better showed Ivelise how much her act of selflessness had meant. They could hear Katie jumping up and down with joy on the other end of the line. It was a lot for Ivelise to process.
Linda summarized the experience by describing Ivelise: “People are basically really good, and she’s just exceptional.” For Ivelise, her act was natural and logical. She just thought that if she had been in the same circumstances, she hoped someone would do the same. It just proves that a little goes a long way to brighten up people’s lives. All it takes is one simple act of kindness.
