GOLDEN VALLEY:- The owner of a UPS store in
Minnesota spent four years searching for the intended recipient of a package
filled with mementos before he found the man living in Georgia.
The package ended up at Randy Holst's UPS
store in Golden Valley after several failed delivery attempts. He opened it to
find a veteran's mementos, including a framed military flag.
When the Department of Veterans Affairs
couldn't help, Holst took his search to the internet. Holst sent more than 40
Facebook messages to people with potential ties to the veteran before he
reached the wife of a man named Tim Burchell on Facebook last month.
Burchell, who lives in St. Marys, Georgia,
confirmed that the items belonged to his deceased father. A framed military
flag, a funeral registry book and other precious memorabilia have finally made
their way to a U.S. Navy veteran’s family in Georgia after about four years of
sleuthing by a Minnesota UPS Store owner.
The package wound up in Randy Holst’s store
after repeated attempts to deliver it failed.
It had been sitting in Holst’s store for
about two years when he finally decided to open it. When he saw what was
inside, Holst put in a call to the U.S. Veterans Administration to locate
relatives of Carl Barnett Burchell, whose name was on the items. Burchell had
died of cancer in 1988.
Holst hit a dead end with the VA. So he began
sending messages on Facebook to people with similar names.
In early January, his efforts paid off, and
he located Carl Burchell’s survivors in St. Marys, Georgia. “You wouldn’t toss
a memory like that,” Holst told the Minneapolis Star Tribune. “I can’t imagine
anyone would.”
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