MARSTONS MILLS, Mass. (AP) - Mark Cordeiro’s daughter Victoria texted him at 11:34 a.m. Thursday.
She’d seen a Facebook post by the Barnstable police about a silver charm bracelet recovered from a break-in in 2016 in Marstons Mills.
“Could this be the charm bracelet?!” Victoria Cordeiro said in a text to her father.
As described in the police post, the charms sounded familiar, with children’s names of Susan Ann, Bruce and Mark. Within about 30 minutes, Mark Cordeiro had driven to the police station and claimed the bracelet.
The bracelet had belonged to his mother, Thelma, who had died when he was 12, in 1966. But on the summer day in 2016 Cordeiro had picked up the bracelet from his ex-wife, put it in his pocket and then he most likely put it in his truck for safekeeping as he went about a busy day of lawn mowing and landscaping. Within a few days he had intended to give it to Victoria for her 21st birthday.
But then he realized the bracelet was missing.
“I had known there had been break-ins,” Cordeiro said of his neighborhood. But he thought he’d most likely dropped it while mowing a lawn.
As it turns out, though, the bracelet was stolen, according to the police.
At around that time, they had arrested a person for breaking into a car on a street near where Cordeiro lived, and that person had other items that appeared to be from other break-ins, including the charm bracelet, Barnstable police Sgt. Eric Drifmeyer said Sunday.
But because Cordeiro had believed he’d lost the charm bracelet he never reported it as a theft to Barnstable police, Drifmeyer said. So the charm bracelet went into storage at the police station, until Kathleen Hinkley in the records department came across it and suggested the department create a Facebook post to try to find the owner.
Within an hour of the post Thursday, Cordeiro had called the police station.
“It’s a great example of the use of social media and all kinds of good things,” Drifmeyer said.
Even Cordeiro, a self-described “Mister Anti-Social Media,” says his mind has been changed.
“I see the good that it has of delivering a message amongst many very quickly,” Cordeiro said. “For that I am forever grateful.”
On Sunday, Cordeiro had a story for each charm, which in turn told the story of what appeared to be important to his mother. There’s a high chair charm and a boat charm to commemorate the birth of Cordeiro’s sister, Susan Ann, because the family bought a boat because she was a girl, Cordeiro said. There’s a charm with tiny pictures of Cordeiro and his brother, Bruce, as boys, and a baby carriage charm, and a bulldog charm for the family dog Deejay, and a typewriter charm because Thelma Cordeiro was a secretary. There is a genie lamp charm for wishes, and a wishing well charm for more wishes, a church charm, and one from a museum in New Bedford, which was Thelma Cordeiro’s hometown. Along with the bracelet, Cordeiro had two photographs of his mother, in her professional clothes, and in one he is a boy sitting on her lap.
On Sunday, Cordeiro, 64, a native of Fairhaven, said he’s been keeping the bracelet in a safe but that later in the day he’d be seeing his daughter.
“She’s getting it this evening,” Cordeiro said. “Almost two years it’s been gone.”
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Online: https://bit.ly/2WpLELR
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Information from: Cape Cod (Mass.) Times, http://www.capecodtimes.com
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