GOLDEN VALLEY, Minn. - At the UPS Store in Golden Valley, co-owner Randy Holst takes pride in his packing.
"I tell people it’s kind of like putting a diaper on,” he said while packing a box. “Except the new dads don’t have to wear a mask.”
For him, it’s all precious cargo.
"Being able to do stuff like this really means a lot to me,” he said.
But it's what someone else packed and mailed that turned this full-time business owner into a part-time detective.
A package came back to his store after the person who was supposed to receive it no longer lived at the address. The sender, who lived in the Twin Cities, was nowhere to be found either.
"When it came back to us, we tried to find the sender of the package, that number had been disconnected,” he recalled.
And since UPS shipped it, the box found its way onto Randy's shelf.
"Eventually after four years I got a response back,” he said with a chuckle.
In four years he tried everything to track down the rightful owner, even sending about 40 messages to possible relatives on Facebook, he said.
"I’m sure some people thought I was some kind of spammer,” he said.
But it was on Facebook where he found him earlier this month.
"I was just flabbergasted. My mouth hit the floor,” said Tim Burchell.
Burchell who lives in Florida got a call from Holst that he couldn’t believe until he got the package and looked inside.
"Just a ton of stuff was inside it. Things I’d never saw before,” Burchell remembered.
Old pictures with his dad who died nearly 30 years ago from cancer, along with poems his father wrote to his step-mom and letters about his dad’s military career
“One letter was from Ronald Reagan for service in the Navy and the other was from Richard Nixon for service too,” he said.
None of it compared to what else was in the box, the American flag from his father's funeral who proudly served in the Navy.
"It was just overwhelming,” he said.
Turns out his step-sister sent the package to the wrong address and assumed he received it back in 2012.
And thanks to Holst, he eventually did in 2016.
"It’s what everybody should be. He’s exactly what everyone should be,” said Burchell.