Purple Heart sold at Goodwill for $4.99 is finally on its way home
For Laura Hardy, $4.99 was a small price to pay to reunite a family treasure with its rightful owners.
Hardy was shopping at a Goodwill store in Arizona last weekend when she discovered a Purple Heart medal for sale -- categorized as "purple jewelry."
The asking price was $4.99.
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Hardy bought the medal, then posted a photo of it to her personal Facebook page in the hopes of locating its rightful owners.
"Looking for the family of Eual H. Whiteman. Deceased in nineteen ninety one," she wrote. "What a shame to find it [the medal] at Goodwill for only $4.99."
Tina Cook, who operates Veteran Buddy Finder, a Facebook group dedicated to helping veterans locate each other, spotted Hardy's plea.
Cook used her vast pool of genealogy resources to find a living relative of Whiteman -- his former sister-in-law, Phyllis Lawson.
From there, the story finally began to unravel. Lawson's son had inherited the medal from Whiteman when he passed away. Soon after, Lawson's son was incarcerated and placed Whiteman's belongings -- including the Purple Heart -- in the care of a friend.
Seems like the friend was not a great friend and donated the items to Goodwill, according to a Facebook post by genealogist Elaine Anderson.
But from now on, it looks like smooth sailing for the misplaced medal, which Hardy plans to mail back to Lawson this week.
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Chloe was the shopping editor at Mashable. She was also previously a culture reporter. You can follow her on Twitter at @chloebryan.
