A prized hockey memento, stored for decades in a stranger's Wisconsin attic, has made it home to Minnesota

Seth Larson was certain he kept the puck.

It was Feb. 6, 1996. He was a sophomore in Red Wing, Minnesota, and he’d scored three consecutive goals in a high school game, his first natural hat trick. Long after his hockey days were done, two totes of mementos – from trophies from when he was a “Squirt” to news clippings from his 1997 state champion team – had been moved numerous times and placed in storage.

Still the question nagged at him: What happened to that puck?

Meanwhile, Sarah Cook was growing up across the Mississippi River in Hager City, Wisconsin. She would wander through her grandfather’s woodworking shop, where her father also worked, and would sit on her grandmother’s lap as she engraved metal that would become part of the plaques produced there.

But Cook’s grandfather died in 1997, when she was 9, and her dad died 6½ years ago. She lives in Mondovi now, and her mother is readying her childhood home – next door to the former Bystrom Woodworking – to be sold.

“When my grandpa passed, some of these scraps of wood, some of the pieces he had recently made, were put into storage because they wanted to remember what beautiful work he did,” Cook said.

“This box of scraps ended up in my mom’s attic. So we were working on clearing out that attic a couple of months ago. I looked into this box and said, oh, cool, this is some of Grandpa’s stuff. I thought maybe I’d take a couple of things out of there.

“I pulled this plaque out, and it was wrapped in foam, and I’m like, what is this? I pulled it out and there was someone’s name on it and it was totally finished.”

Complete with a well-worn hockey puck.

“I’m like, what? Why do we even have this?” Cook said. “So I said, why don’t I take this and see if I can find this guy on Facebook.”

She finally posted her story Saturday in the “Forgotten Wisconsin” group. By Sunday, Cook and Larson made contact and over lunch Monday at a Culver’s in Rochester, Minnesota, Larson and his prized puck were reunited.

“I’m still trying to track down whether it was the school that ordered (the plaque) or it was my stepdad at that time, but I remember the puck vividly,” said Larson, then a high-scoring forward, now 43 and an IT contractor in Albert Lea, Minnesota. “That NHL faded logo has been in the back of my mind for 27 years.

“I know that from over the years when I would go through that past high school memorabilia, I would always think the puck was in there somewhere. And I never found it. Over the years it’s faded further and further. It was awesome to see.”

Larson brought another plaque with him when he met Cook and two of her friends. It also was made by Cook’s grandfather, Lytle Bystrom, and commemorates Larson’s first high school goal.

The second plaque was among the last projects finished by Bystrom before he died unexpectedly.

“Kind of nice to be able to finalize my grandfather’s work, in a way,” Cook said.

If this seems like the perfect small-town/small-world story, wait, there’s one more twist.

“In Albert Lea, here, there’s another guy named Seth Larson, who’s a year younger than me, and she reached out to him because she found him on Facebook thinking it was me,” Larson said.

That, as Cook found out, is Seth Larson the wrestler, not Seth Larson the hockey player.

“I know him,” Larson said, “so he actually reached out to me and gave me her phone number. And that’s when I called her.”

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This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Minnesota hockey player's prized puck returned from Wisconsin attic