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W.Va. man returns family silver to rightful owner

CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) – Last month, Sharon Orndorff of Charleston received a call she never expected, and was given back a family heirloom she didn’t know was lost.

Several weeks earlier, Tim Boyd, who lives about a mile from Orndorff, knew there was something not quite right about the set of antique silverware he bought for about $40 off W.Va. 21 near Orchard Manor. He’d been on the lookout for yard tools.

“Usually someone in a family keeps something like that, you know?” he said. “It just didn’t make no sense at all that it was out there.”

Boyd saw a name and a date engraved on a small plate, front and center on the wooden box that held the silverware. The words were “Marie Orndorff, Dec. 25, 1957.”

Boyd purchased the set after he asked a man selling goods from his truck if he had any antiques. “I buy antiques for my daughter when I can,” he said.

The man went to the front of his truck and brought out the wooden box with the plated silver inside. He told Boyd the set belonged to an aunt who died.

The man asked for $100 from Boyd, who talked him down to $40 or $45.

Still, Boyd never felt quite right about keeping the silverware set, which features forks, knives, spoons and serving pieces.

“I had no idea how this guy had come across this, really,” he said.

Meanwhile, over the last few years, Sharon Orndorff had helped care for her mother, Marie, who lived with Alzheimer’s disease and dementia. Sharon hired caregivers to help her mother in her last years.

“Most of my mother’s caregivers were very good and honest,” she said. “At the very end I had one of the best.”

But one woman was not.

In the fall of 2008, Orndorff moved her mother next door to her home on Arlington Avenue. She was cleaning out her mother’s cabinets and noticed that a bottle of Xanax was missing. Shortly thereafter, she found out that the prescription had been refilled twice. “I said, ‘Not by anybody in the family.”’

She noted the time and date when the pills were purchased, and checked the surveillance cameras with security at the Kmart pharmacy. Sure enough, the caregiver had the prescriptions refilled and kept the pills.

Orndorff had left the silverware set in the basement of her mother’s home next door. She’s not certain the woman stole the set – as she had opened the house next door to renters – but the caregiver admitted she used a key to take a nap at Marie Orndorff’s home, even though she was not allowed to.

Sharon didn’t wait long to fire the caregiver, even though she hoped to catch her in the act of refilling the prescription. “I didn’t want her near my mother,” she said.

On Nov. 12, Marie Orndorff died at 89.

Boyd and his daughter had been trying to find her family online, with little luck. Then he came upon Marie Orndorff’s obituary in the newspaper.

Boyd called Wallace & Wallace Funeral Home in Rainelle, who contacted Sharon Orndorff to tell her about the missing silverware. She was leery at first, but she called Boyd back. They met that same day, on Dec. 14.

“I thought, what in the world? … I was so taken aback because I didn’t even know that was missing,” Orndorff said. “It’s not worth a whole lot, but it’s priceless to me to have that.”

She told Boyd what she thinks happened, and he refused to take a penny for the set.

“It’s something I’ll never ever forget,” she said. “You don’t find too many people like that.”

The silverware set – made by the 1847 Rogers Bros. Company – had been a gift from Marie’s husband on Christmas Day 52 years ago.

This Christmas, Sharon sent out cards to friends and family that told the story of the returned silverware.

“Some say, that was mother’s Christmas Gift to me this year,” she wrote.

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Information from: The Charleston Gazette, http://www.wvgazette.com

Copyright 2010 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

AP-CS-01-06-10 1439EST