'It's just a matter of time': Thrift store sleuth reunites heirlooms to families

When an old item makes its way to St. Vincent de Paul, it’s supposed to be dusted off, affixed with a price tag and placed on a shelf in hopes that someone will see it, fall in love and give it a second life.

That is, after all, how thrift shops work. You know the saying about one man's (not-quite) trash being another man's treasure.

But every now and then, employee Jenna Thalman would spot something that made her wonder: Had this really been ditched by whoever owned it originally? Or had it once been a beloved item that happened to have been mistakenly placed in a pile labeled “donate” rather than “keep”?

Take, for example, two oversized Bibles that made their way into the Milford shop where Thalman works.

“At first, it was just something that was really neat,” Thalman said, recalling the pair of Good Books. “They were like these old 1800s Bibles for a family, and they had names on them.”

That was her first inkling that these weren’t meant for a thrift store’s shelves. The second clue came when Thalman opened the “ginormous” books.

“Inside, there were all these old pictures of family," she said. "It had death certificates, a marriage certificate, it had all these names.”

Thalman, 35, has a sentimental streak, in part because she’s moved a few times and has lost boxes of her own family photos along the way. If someone ever found her missing baby photos, she said she’d love to have them back, so she figures others might feel the same.

Thalman hatched a plan and ran it by her store manager, Jessica Cope, who in turn ran it by her boss, Jim Wenstrup: These items seem too personal to sell, she reasoned, so what if we hang on to them and see if we can find someone in the family?

“And my boss is generous enough to let me put them in the back and see if I could find who they belong to before we put them out for sale," Thalman said.

So she did. She found a grandson, and that grandson knew nothing of the Bibles that had once belonged to people in his family who’d died long before he lived. Nor did he want the books full of photos and family names to end up a curiosity in some stranger’s living room. Thalman boxed up the Bibles – no small task, given their delicacy and size – and shipped them.

It wasn’t her first heirloom reunion, nor her last. It’s become something of a little side project – one that she has to balance carefully with her real job, which is to help St. Vincent de Paul sell incoming not-quite trash/treasures to raise money to help people in need.

Because of that, most things end up on shelves, as they should. But when Thalman notices something that feels a bit too personal, she thinks it through. It’s one thing for someone to donate a dog-eared book or a faded Trivial Pursuit game. It’s another to plop a shoebox full of baby pictures into the bin.

At first, Thalman did the sleuthing solo, but it turns out, people like helping families reunite with tidbits from their past.

“I would post one or two onto the local Facebook page for Milford,” Thalman said, “and then, from there, people started sharing.”

Coworkers also offered to help, she said.

“The community just really went crazy with it, too. I get a lot of help. I probably wouldn’t find anywhere near as many without all the help I get.”

That's clear from the myriad comments and tags that appear on the Facebook page Thalman started to help in her reunification efforts. The page is called “Accidentally Donated” and has more than 300 members to date.

“I didn’t think that it would be so positive,” she said. “It’s just a really good feeling. Some people didn’t think they even had these pictures or forgot or thought they were lost forever.”

There are, of course, some 'meh' reunions – people who didn’t mean to donate the item(s) to be sold, but who also didn’t want them back. In those instances, Thalman dutifully deposits the unwanted items into a trash bin if they're not suitable to sell. But other times, the response is far more dramatic.

“I’ve had a few criers,” Thalman said. “It gets a little overwhelming.”

People share their stories: Those are pictures of my grandparents, they explain, or my uncle or my mom who died years ago. Sometimes the items belong to family they never met. The reactions she’s gotten and the tales she’s heard are what keep her going – even when the reunions aren’t overnight.

“I really haven’t gotten to the point of ‘what do I do with them when I haven’t found anyone yet,’” she said. “One of my longer ones that I had, I just recently found their granddaughter.”

That search took about five months, she explained.

“To me, it’s just a matter of time," she said. "So it’s just not an option, I guess, to give up.”

This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: Thrift store sleuth reunites heirlooms to families