KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Kansas City, Missouri, woman's mission to find her stolen car took an unexpected turn.
When Chandra Walz recovered her stolen vehicle on Friday, she never expected she'd have a mystery of her own to solve.
The car was damaged on the outside when Walz recovered it in St. Joseph, Missouri, but what she found inside the car was even more disturbing.
"So I was kind of like, smelly things, concrete, trash bags, what's in there?" she said.
Inside the trash bags were hundreds of photos and military awards.
Walz’s car was stolen from her Northland apartment complex the day of the AFC Championship Game at Arrowhead Stadium. Walz said she was warming up her car at the time it was stolen.
"A black car pulled up behind my car, and a female got out," Walz said, "and she opened my door and I ran out and yelled to get out of my car and she peeled out."
Within 10 minutes, Kansas City, Missouri, police arrived on scene to take a report. Walz said she then posted what happened to her on Facebook.
"A week passed, and two weeks passed, and three weeks passed and I never heard anything until two days ago," Walz said.
Several people commented on the post saying they saw the car involved in a hit and run. Another person said the car had been abandoned near their home.
"Another gentleman on a St. Joe crime page on Facebook posted that it had been abandoned for three days," Walz said, "and so he matched my VIN number with it and we found it that way."
When Walz recovered her vehicle and located those military photos, she posted those to Facebook as well. It took only 15 minutes to find the family.
"She said she was crying [and had] just been super emotional just," Walz said. "It was something that always hung on the wall, you know, that she remembers as a child."
Walz said the owner of the items is in his 90s and lives in St. Joseph. According to Walz, he had the items sitting in his car when it was stolen three weeks ago.
It's unknown how the items ended up in Walz's car.
