Mechanics are used to troubleshooting and puzzling things out. But when Chad Volk of Crystal, Minnesota, was wrenching on a 2015 Ford Edge, he came up against a mystery the likes of which he’d never seen under a hood: a wallet that appeared to have been missing for 10 years.

Volk owns LC Car Care. He was recently replacing the cooling fan on a 10-year-old Ford crossover. To get to the component, he had to remove the vehicle’s air intake box. Once the job was done, he found the airbox wouldn’t snap back into place as it should. It felt like something was stuck beneath it. Sure enough, the hole the box’s fastener should have clicked into was blocked.

Volk says, “And that’s where the wallet was, sitting on top of that hole.”

I imagine Volk double-checked his own pockets and asked around the shop to see if anyone had lost a wallet. Then Volk began to wonder if the wallet had rolled into his shop with the car.

The mechanic admits he took a break to try to solve the mystery. “I just sit down and go through this wallet.”

The wallet contained $15 in U.S. bills and $250 worth of gift cards. Volk dug deeper, hoping for a Minnesota driver’s license or something else he could use to contact the wallet’s owner. That’s when he found a Ford employee badge with a picture and a name: Richard Guildford. Volk got on Facebook and found a Richard Guildford who lives in Michigan and is retired from Ford.

A Ford employee’s wallet finds its way home

Guildford remembers when Volk contacted him about a possible missing wallet. “First thing I said is, ‘Did you find it in a car?’ and he’s like ‘Yes I did.’”

This is where things get really weird. The Ford Edge wasn’t assembled in Michigan. According to Ford Authority, Ford shipped a bunch of Edge crossovers that were having electrical issues from the Chicago Assembly Plant to Guildford’s team to troubleshoot. On the day Guildford was going through the cars, he made a fateful choice.

“I never wore sweatpants to work, but I did that day. And I had my wallet in my shirt pocket.”

Guildford must have leaned over one of the Fords’ engine compartments when his wallet fell out. He recalls the moment he realized it was missing. “I checked and I’m like, ‘Smitty, I lost my wallet.’ So we all went off trying to look. You know, there was 2,000 cars out there and we couldn’t find it.”

The team reassembled the Ford Edge, with the wallet trapped inside, then shipped it to a dealership in Arizona. The crossover later made its way to Minnesota, wallet riding securely beneath the airbox for 150,000 miles, until the day it rolled into Volk’s shop.

So Volk dutifully put the wallet in the mail. Guildford called the $15 “well-traveled currency.” He also admits he’d planned to use the gift cards to buy Christmas presents for his family. Maybe they’ll get something special this year, thanks to a mechanic in Minnesota. You can see the amazing traveling wallet for yourself in the video embedded below: