Watertown Woman Finds Family Keepsakes In Heating Pad Box

WATERTOWN (CBS) -- A family keepsake once thought to be gone forever was found in the unlikeliest of places.

Mimi de Quesada, of Watertown, thought she was buying a heating pad at CVS. When she returned home and opened the box, she found it was full of letters, documents, passport, photographs of a woman apparently named Ludmila. The items were all in Russian, so there was not much de Quesada could decipher.

"I didn't want to take it back to CVS just to have them throw it away," de Quesada said. So she contact Watertown Police to report the items and Officer Timothy Menton responded to the call.

"We have no idea how this happened," Watertown Police Chief Michael Lawn told WBZ NewsRadio 1030.

Within an hour, Menton had a lead.

"He was able to take the name and run it through the computer databases here and he was able to locate the woman's daughter here in Watertown," Lawn said.

Menton met with the daughter's boyfriend who said the mother had died two years ago and the items in the box were forgotten during an estate sale.

The daughter was shocked but thankful to get these items back, Lawn said.

"How they got to the shelves of CVS is still a mystery!" Mimi de Quesada wrote on Facebook. "But she gets to spend Valentines Day reading letters and looking at photographs of her mom."