Retired Ford worker's wallet returned after 11 years stuck in an engine
And he didn't — at least not for more than a decade.
Guilford, 56, lives in Petersburg, Michigan. He retired from Ford in January 2024, but in 2014, he was repairing the electrical systems of vehicles at Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne when, unbeknownst to him, his wallet slipped out of his shirt pocket, landing amid the transmission system of a red 2015 Ford Edge SUV.
The wallet would end up going on a 151,000-mile odyssey across multiple states before a mechanic in Minnesota last month discovered that the obstacle that was preventing him from putting the vehicle's airbox back in place was — a man's leather wallet.
"He messaged me in the middle of the night with a picture of it and said, 'Did you lose your wallet years ago? Lol. I found it. It's in the engine of a car. It's in Minnesota,' " Guilford told the Detroit Free Press, part of the USA TODAY Network. 'For 11 years, that wallet was riding on top of the transmission, held in there by the airbox."
'Hey Schmitty, my wallet's missing!'
Just how the wallet disappeared in the first place is quite a tale.
Guilford said he worked 35 years for Ford in various plants and his expertise centered on electrical. In 2014, his job was to make heavy electric repairs in the garage area at Michigan Assembly in Wayne. That means as cars came off the assembly line, 'if there was a minced wire in the floor harness, it came to me for repair. If the lights didn't work, or whatever, it came to me.'
At that time, Ford assembled its Focus and C-Max cars at Michigan Assembly. Today, Ford's website says, the plant employs close to 6,000 people and builds the Ford Ranger pickup and Ford Bronco SUV.
Guilford said his team excelled at its job. So when some of Ford's other plants in North America got behind on repairs of the vehicles they built, Ford would sometimes send them to Michigan Assembly for the fix. The week before Christmas 2014, he said, about 2,500 vehicles arrived from other factories that needed electrical work.
One day, Guilford did something unusual and put his wallet in his shirt pocket because his pants did not have pockets. That would prove to be a mistake.
"I was working on the floor harness underneath that particular car," Guilford recalls of the 2015 Edge. He remembers the car because it was shortly after that vehicle was completed when he noticed his shirt pocket felt lighter.
'I told my buddy (Dave Schmit), who was my work partner, 'Hey, Schmitty, my wallet's missing!' " Guilford said.
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A night-long search for the missing wallet
Guilford's anxiety escalated with each minute he couldn't find it. The wallet contained only $15 cash, but his driver's license and Ford employee ID were in there. He also had "a couple hundred dollars in gift cards" for Cabela's sporting goods store. He had planned to use those cards to buy Christmas gifts for his kids.
The first vehicle he and Schmitty looked through in their search for the wallet was that 2015 Edge Guilford had just worked on. Guilford recalled: 'We were looking through it for my wallet forever. I thought I lost it under the carpet of that car because I had pulled the carpet up on that car to work on the main wiring harness."
Ford spokesperson Jessica Enoch said "it's exceedingly rare" for any plant workers to lose a personal item in a vehicle they are working on and she said there are policies to secure personal items to prevent it from happening. Enoch did not provide examples of those policies and declined further comment on this story.
Guilford worked the midnight shift at the time and when the day shift arrived, nearly all of his team and the day side crew were on the hunt.
"Everybody tried to help me find my wallet and we didn't find it," Guilford said. "We were looking in the cars. Everybody was going car-to-car. We had a list of the cars we worked on. I couldn't say I lost it in that particular car (referring to the 2015 Edge), but it was in one of the cars."
It would turn out that Guilford's first instinct that the wallet was in that 2015 Edge was right. Guilford had also worked on the transmission wiring on that vehicle. Today, he reasons that when he bent over, that was when the wallet fell out of his shirt pocket.
"It landed on top of the transmission, but it must have fell down into a little cubby, which I didn't see and know that I had done that, and I put the car back together," Guilford said in hindsight. "You'd think it would have fell out later, but it was locked in there in that airbox."
A Ford Edge's secret revealed
The airbox contains the vehicle's air filter. It is in the front part of the engine compartment. Guilford's wallet was on the transmission, possibly held in place by the airbox when that 2015 Edge left Michigan Assembly in 2014. The car was shipped to Arizona first where it was bought by the person who owns it now and lives in Lake Crystal, Minnesota, which is about 95 miles southwest of Minneapolis.
That's where Chad Volk, who opened LC Car Care in Lake Crystal in 2018, became well acquainted with the 2015 Edge. Volk, 40, said he started "wrenching" on cars with his dad in the garage at age 5 and later became a diesel mechanic for a construction company. He told the Detroit Free Press he has done various maintenance on that Ford Edge for years.
But in late June, while replacing the SUV's cooling fans, Volk discovered the car's secret.
He had pulled out the airbox, something he'd done several times before on that car, only this time it wouldn't slide back into place. So Volk looked closer to investigate and saw the wallet sitting on top of the transmission.
"I was surprised. You find stuff all the time, usually tools," Volk told the Free Press. "I looked through it and I see a Ford Motor Co. badge. I thought I'm going to try finding this guy to see if I can get it back to him."
Volk knew the wallet was old, but Guilford's driver's license said that he lived in Michigan. So he took a "stab" at finding Guilford. On social media, Volk found a Richard Guilford in Michigan who had worked for Ford and he thought that's got to be the guy. So on June 30 Volk privately messaged Guilford.
'I was like, 'Hey did you lose a wallet years ago? I found it in the engine in a car,' " Volk said. "He said he lost it in the factory and they looked for it for days. (Guilford) said, 'There's even $15 in it for you.' He told me he just retired in January and this was the gold piece to the pie."
Volk declined to keep the $15 cash that Guilford offered him from what was inside the wallet. Instead, he said he walked three doors down from his auto repair shop to the post office. There, he paid $10.80 to mail the wallet back to Guilford in Michigan.
'The funny thing is I literally had the airbox out of the car a couple weeks before that and I didn't see it," Volk said. "My guess is it was jammed somewhere else and fell to the right spot, because an inch one way or the other, it would have been on the ground and no one would have ever found it."
A guy who tries 'to make someone's day brighter'
Volk said he has been longtime friends with the 88-year-old man who owned the Edge, which has about 151,000 miles on it. The man died the day after Volk found the wallet.
"So I didn't get to tell him about it. But I told his son, Dan, about it and he got a kick out of it," Volk said, admitting it is a cool story. "The car is still in the family.'
Volk said it never occurred to him to keep the wallet or to toss it out.
"My first instinct was just to jump on (social media) and find him," Volk said. "I wanted to try to do as much as I can to get it back to him. It's how I am. For small jobs, I don't usually charge people, just to make someone's day brighter. I'm just a one-man shop. It was a friend's car too, so that made it all the better."
As a result of his good-willed gesture and the publicity he's received from local media about returning the wallet, he won a new customer. Volk said a man drove several miles to Volk's shop to have Volk service the man's classic car.
"He said he trusted me," Volk said. "I got new followers on Facebook and other people too."
Guilford said everything in the wallet is in pretty good shape considering the journey it endured. Guilford said Cabela's assured him it would issue him new gift cards.
"Some things in it were hot and crisp, think of how hot that car got," Guilford said. "It doesn't look like it ever got wet, just hot. That little corner kept (the wallet) completely dry and completely preserved. I want the wallet to stay as it is. It is a memento."
Jamie L. LaReau is the senior autos writer who covers Ford Motor Co. for the Detroit Free Press. Contact Jamie at jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. To sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.
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