The Wallet in the Wall

    When Kent Andreas was remodeling his basement recently, he found something unusual inside a wall. And while finding a 40-year-old wallet is strange in and of itself, in this case it’s especially odd given the fact that his Eau Claire home has been there for less than a decade.

    Eager to reunite the wallet with its owner and uncover the story of how it got there, Kent Google-searched the name on the 1966 driver’s license, and tracked down their workplace phone number.

    “He said, ‘I found your wallet,’” said Katherine Geissler, still an Eau Claire resident. “And I said, ‘What do you mean? I have my wallet right here.’ Then I thought it was some kind of come-on, a new scam,” she laughs. It was the mention of a paystub dated March 10, 1968 from Uniroyal Tire Factory that convinced Geissler the wallet really belonged to her.

    Some further research on Kent’s part, which brought him to the Chippewa Valley Museum, Eau Claire County Court House, City Hall, and the home’s previous owners, helped piece together the story of how a 40-year-old wallet was in his 10-year-old house.

    Apparently the home was built in 1943, at 1719 Necessity St. in the Town of Union. The wallet survived a basement flood in the 60s and two fires in the 80s, until the city purchased the property after a severe basement flood in the early 2000s. The city then replaced the home with a drainage basin, and moved the house across Vine Street to Orchard Place. That explains where the wallet came from, but how did it get there?

    One of Kent’s theories was that a construction worker accidentally sealed it inside the wall. But Katherine busted that hypothesis when she revealed that she did do construction work, but not in the 60s. One clue led Kent and Katherine to believe that the wallet’s location was more foul play than accident.