7/12/21, Lost and Found

Hi Everyone,

I hope you’re having a relaxing time somewhere, and taking time off for a real vacation this summer. I hope everything is going well for you.

We’ve had three remarkable incidents in recent months of valued objects lost, and found in nearly miraculous circumstances, which I thought I’d share in case you’ve lost anything lately too. It’s amazing how things turn up sometimes. When I was a child, my mother was always hiding valuable objects, and then losing them, or forgetting where she put them, and she prayed to Saint Anthony. I don’t know if he is still the appropriate saint for lost and found. And so often what we lose is not necessarily of great monetary value, but something we really cherish, or need. All three of these incidents were unusual enough that I wanted to share them with you, in case you’ve recently lost something too. And they really were amazing events!!.

1) As I shared with you on Instagram, for the first time in my life, I had a handbag stolen right from under the table while I was having lunch at a very nice restaurant with my family. I never felt it go, and as it turned out it was stolen by a real pro. It was a beautiful black leather Hermes handbag that I really love, quite large, with red leather lining, and I wear it a lot. I bought it second hand at a vintage store in New York about 10 years ago. it was very expensive originally, and I paid a fairly high price for it. it was one of a kind and it had been made to order. The bag was under the table, next to my feet, it was stolen while I had lunch, by a well-dressed man who dropped his raincoat near my table, scooped it up, and my bag with it, and I discovered it with dismay at the end of lunch. I never noticed the man who took it. Fortunately, the police have cameras strategically placed around Paris, and they got the whole thing on film. I spent the afternoon at the police station to file a report, and was told that valuable bags like that are resold very quickly in other foreign markets, and it was ‘certain’, I would never see my bag again, which would be on its way to Africa, Asia, or another European country within a day. I was really sad. Even though it was just an ‘object’, I really loved it, and was sad to lose it. Because it was a custom order, and worth some money, I knew I couldn’t replace it. A few days later, an enterprising police detective called me, and had seen the report of my stolen bag. They had recognized the thief on their video, and he’d been in prison before for stealing items of high value. The detective promised to do his best. Paris went into their second lockdown two days after my bag was stolen, so travel was limited, but the bag could still have been shipped out of the country to be sold. Less than two weeks later, I got an early morning call from the same detective. They had been able to track down the thief, surprised him at his home, and the bag was sitting in his bedroom, since he couldn’t travel to sell it. In less than 2 weeks they returned my bag which they told me I would never see again!! It seemed like a miracle to me, and I am grateful all over again every time I wear the bag, and now I love it even more!! And the thief is back in prison serving a 2 year sentence as a recidivist. He threw away all the contents of the bag, my phone, my address book, favorite vintage sunglasses, regular glasses, tried to use my credit cards and failed. And I am SOOO HAPPY to have my bag back. It still feels like a miracle that they found it and gave it back to me. The detective who tracked it down was amazing!!

2) My assistant in Paris is Italian, has an Italian passport, and a 10 year visa to enter the US when he accompanies me when I travel to the States. Those visas are very hard to get, are not being renewed during the pandemic, and can’t be replaced if you lose them, they are put into the passport of the person who has the visa. And my assistant needs it to do his job for me, to accompany me back to the States (with a heavy briefcase, a mountain of suitcases and 3 dogs). He works for me in Paris, not the States. On his day off, he drove about an hour outside Paris on his Vespa, and had his passport in his jeans pocket. When he got back that night, he discovered that he had lost his passport, somewhere during the day, no idea where. He called all the places where he’d been, no one had found it, it was gone. Those visas can’t be replaced, and if you lose them, you have to reapply, and they aren’t being replaced or renewed right now in the pandemic. The next day, he decided to retrace his route of the day, on his Vespa, and see if he found it on a street or in a ditch or a gutter somewhere, he didn’t find it where he’d been, and would have to report it lost, and the visa would be cancelled once he did. he was dejected and upset on his way home, his passport and visa were gone. Halfway back to Paris, he saw a truck drive over something small and red. It was a main freeway, with heavy traffic, and it seemed impossible that it could be his passport, on the on the highway he’d travelled the day before, with traffic rolling over it. He pulled off the road, just in case, waited for traffic to slow down, dashed into the middle of the highway, narrowly escaping being hit by several cars, grabbed the small red object and ran back to the side of the road. It was his passport, with the visa, he had found it and it had survived 24 hours of heavy traffic rolling over it. He was beaming when he got back!!! And it seemed like a miracle!!!

3) My daughter wears several bracelets on her arm (like I do!!), all of them sentimental to her. One of them is a special bracelet that you put on with a little screwdriver and 2 screws and you can’t take off, except with the special screwdriver. She loves that bracelet. We met in New York for lunch, and her sister commented on it. After that, my daughter travelled to San Francisco, and then to Colorado, and two weeks after that lunch, my daughter looked at her arm and saw that it was gone. Normally it can’t fall off, except if for some reason both screws had failed and fallen out and the bracelet fell off. She had no idea when it had fallen off in the past two weeks, or where. New York? San Francisco? Colorado? She made a list of everywhere she’d been, restaurants, airplanes, everyplace she could think of. The likelihood of finding it seemed nil. To make matters worse, the bracelet is made in two separate parts, so if the screws had failed, the bracelet would be in two parts, and even harder to find them both. She was really sad about it, and I suggested she call hotels, restaurants, airlines in all 3 cities, asked her neighbors. She had gone biking and had hiked up a mountain in Colorado. It was hard to imagine she’d ever find it. She asked a neighbor in Colorado, who was stunned. Several days before, his teen age son had found half a bracelet on a bridge with a bike path she had travelled on. She ran to his house to see it, and there it was: half a miracle, half her lost bracelet was in his hand, and she was thrilled to find at least half of it. A few minutes later, the son who had found it came home, and she thanked him, and he held the bracelet in his hand for a minute, and commented that it was heavy, so it might get lodged somewhere. They went back to the bridge where he’d found it, with a river flowing below it, and he went down to the riverbank, which was edged in mud along the shores, and he dug for a few minutes in the mud—-and the rest of the miracle appeared, the other half of her bracelet was lodged in the mud, covered by a thin layer of mud. The miracle was complete!!! She has her bracelet back and is thrilled!!!

All three of these instances seemed miraculous and so unlikely. What were the odds in each case of ever seeing the lost object again? A bag stolen by a practiced professional to sell on a foreign market anywhere in the world? a passport lost along fifty miles of highway in a high traffic area 24 hours later, so small you could barely see it under the speeding wheels of cars and trucks? a bracelet broken in two parts, lost on a mountain road over a swiftly moving river lined with mud—to find both parts days later, in the mud on the riverbank?   These incidents reminded me that miracles do happen, against the fiercest odds. Some things are in fact lost forever, but others turn up in the most mysterious ways, with the help of strangers, sometimes by prayer—-but sometimes you really do find what you lost, even when it seems impossible. So, if you’re looking for something you lost or misplaced, do your best to find it, don’t give up, and it may come back to you!!! If you’ve lost some treasured sentimental object, I hope you find it!!! Have a great week!!! full of good surprises!!!

love, Danielle