Michigan autoworker’s lost wallet found under car hood in Minnesota over a decade later

A retired Michigan autoworker’s lost wallet was discovered under the hood of a car in Minnesota on it over a decade after it vanished while he was working at a Ford assembly plant.

Richard Guilford’s tri-fold leather wallet — filled with a driver’s license, work ID, gift cards worth $275, cash, and lottery tickets — turned up under the hood of a car being repaired at a shop in Lake Crystal, Minnesota.

The wallet was discovered in June by mechanic Chad Volk, sandwiched between the transmission and the air filter box of a 2015 Ford Edge with 151,000 miles on it.

“Did you lose your wallet years ago? If so, it was in the engine bay of a car,” Volk wrote to Guilford on Facebook.

Volk messaged a photo of the wallet and included the driver’s license, where Guilford saw a younger headshot of himself.

“Crazy,” Volk said of his wallet turning up.

Guilford was working on the same car in 2014 at a Ford factory in Wayne on an assembly line of new vehicles waiting to be shipped out to dealerships, when he realized his wallet had vanished.

Unsure where it had disappeared — the autoworker searched dozens of cars before giving up on finding that wallet, which was a gift from his sons.

“I can’t take too much time to look for this because I gotta work. I’m on the clock,” he recalled feeling. “No luck. Life went on.”

Guilford, now 56 and living in Petersburg, Michigan, retired from Ford in 2024 after nearly 35 years.

“The amazing part to me was it was so protected,” Guilford said.

“Think about this: 11 years, rain, snow. It was in Minnesota, for crying out loud. It was in Arizona when it was bought. Think about how hot a transmission gets in Arizona driving down the road. That’s incredible.”

Some of the gift cards in the wallet were remarkably still valid.

Cabela’s, an outdoor retailer, said the $250 gift card Guilford had in his wallet is still valid. The company has since offered him more to bless his luck.

“I’m going to put everything back in it and leave it just like it is, and it’s gonna sit at the house in the china cabinet, and that’s for my kids,” said Guilford.

“They can tell my great-grandkids about it. We’re big into stories. I like tellin’ stories. That’s just who I am.”

With Post wires