Reunited : Some Stolen Wallets, Purses Find Way Home

Mary Cosman’s billfold fell out of her pocket and was scooped up by a stranger before she could retrieve it from the sidewalk. Adele Budman’s wallet was taken from her purse while she shopped for her husband. Catherine Graves’ handbag was snatched by a mugger who shoved her to the ground in the garage of her apartment building and beat her.

They and many others were the random victims of urban theft, parted from their possessions in different places, different ways and at different times.

Found in Ventilation Shaft

Yet their wallets were all found in the same, unlikely spot--a ventilation shaft at a May Co. store that was apparently used by a thief or thieves as a dumping ground for about 125 wallets and coin purses stolen or lost during the past few years.

“It looks like the May Co. was a drop-off,” said Los Angeles Police Detective Charlie Wright, adding that the cache discovered last week in the Wilshire Boulevard store was the largest such hoard he has ever come across.

In many cases, police will never know the owners since about 50 of the wallets had been emptied of identification as well as cash. But about 75 wallets were still fat with credit cards, driver’s licenses and family snapshots, revealing victims from throughout the Los Angeles area, many of them older women, Wright said.

The person who robbed Budman did not wander far with her wallet, which was plucked from her purse at the May Co. last year.

‘It Was Gone’

“I went to pay for a shirt that I bought for my husband, and it was gone,” Budman recalled. “I never had my purse out of my arm. Someone reached in and just took it.”

Graves was returning to her apartment in the Wilshire area one afternoon about three years ago when a man accosted her in the garage.

“I was beaten up terribly,” she said.

Graves was briefly hospitalized and required stitches for a facial cut. The robber took her handbag, containing her wedding and engagement rings as well as her wallet.

“We had a burglary in the building, and I took them (the rings) with me. . . . I should have left them in the apartment,” she said, still dismayed at their loss.

One of her stolen credit cards was subsequently used in Mexico after she had canceled it.

It was about a year ago that Hilda Lall lost her wallet and the $18 in it. She thinks it slipped from her purse when she was putting money in the collection plate at her Wilshire area church.

“I went back to church looking for it--but $18--I considered myself lucky,” she said.

The two young men who brushed past Hannah Tikotzky on her way to a Fairfax Avenue bus stop last year were young and polite, she recalled.

“They made a nice gesture of letting me go ahead, and I said, ‘Oh, what gentlemen.”

When she boarded the bus near the May Co., Tikotzky realized her wallet had been lifted from her handbag.

Cosman was also near the May Co. when her wallet fell out of her pocket several years ago.

“I missed it right away,” she said. But when she turned to look for it, she saw a young woman stoop, pick something up and jog away. Cosman said she did not call out because she was not sure what the woman had found.

Wright said the cache was discovered by workmen cleaning out a shaft in the wall of a third floor women’s restroom. The detective said it appeared that the thieves had removed vent grills in restroom stalls and stuffed the wallets inside since the shaft design indicates that the booty could not have been dropped from above.

Wright said security officers have spotted suspicious-looking women in the store who may have picked purses and then retreated to the restroom. As for the male robbers reported by some of the victims, Wright said the women “could have had companions.”

Not all of the shafts have been searched, raising the possibility that more wallets could be recovered, Wright added.

May Co. managers declined comment, referring all questions to a company spokesman who could not be reached.