Alan's Family Jewels

Two weeks ago my buddy Alan told me this crazy story about how he'd received this random phone call from a Rocky Mountain News reporter asking about his mother. I listened intently (I've had breakfast with Alan's mother) as he narrated a saga of lost family jewels that had been recovered by this reporter and the unexplainable search for their owner.

Well, that reporter printed the story, and you can read it here.

Just a few of the more remarkable excerpts:

She opened the envelope. Inside were silk pouches. Inside the pouches was jewelry. Jade. Gold. Pearls. Coral. Necklaces and rings and earrings. A small gold Buddha figure, studded with diamonds.

Then this:

She and her colleague spread the jewelry out on a table in a back room near a vault in the treasurer's office. The bank reported the box abandoned in 2005, which told McKee that rent had not been paid for at least five years. It belonged to Nora Wang, address unknown.

And here's where my boy makes his appearance:

I troll the Internet and start making calls. Two hours later, I find an ex-brother-in-law in Memphis, Tenn. Ten minutes later, I reach his nephew, Alan Wang, Nora's son.

"I can't believe this," he says. "Do you know how long we've been looking for this box?"

"Do you know what's in it?" I ask.

"Jewels," he says. "They came from my grandmother and my aunt. Some date back to the Mongolian empire. We've been looking for this box for 10 years. We thought it was stolen. You have no idea what this means."

He says his mom will break down when she hears, that the jewelry was the archive of family memory and she always said the one thing she wanted was to see it again.

Seriously, how often do you get a story like this? What's lost is found; altruism wins the day; we're all connected.

Good news is always good, but sometimes it's really good. Something tells me this news is really good.