John Connor’s first day at Shark Wake Park as a diver didn’t go as expected.
He was looking for a lost phone but found something else.
While he packed his $1,000 flashlight, the lake conditions were too dark to see anything, so he relied on nothing but a metal detector and his gloves. He didn’t find the phone, but he did find a bracelet.
“The bracelet was aluminum,” he said. “Not all that glitters is gold.”
Connor first noticed the engraving on the bracelet that honored a fallen patrolman in Bloomingdale, New Jersey named Gary Walker.
“Reading the information on the bracelet and putting one and two together,” Connor said, “I felt like I was obligated in sending this gentleman home”.
He did what anyone who loses something hopes for. He sent it addressed to the Bloomingdale Police Department hoping someone would locate its owner. Sure enough, they did.
“Here it is!” said Danielle Walker, Gary Walker’s wife. She holds up her wrist where she wears the bracelet. “It’s home again. I was so happy it was returned. I can’t believe it.”
Danielle Walker's husband passed away during COVID-19 in 2020. She got the bracelet during a cross-country bike race in 2021 that honors fallen patrolmen. But shortly after she got it, she lost it in North Myrtle Beach.
“I just figured it was at the bottom of that lake and it would stay there,” Danielle Walker said.
When she received the call from the police chief at Bloomingdale P.D., she knew it was meant to be and felt a nudge from Gary himself.
“I’m sure my husband was up there like, God, we got to get this bracelet back to my wife! Who do you know?” she laughed. “I feel like [Gary’s] just letting us know he’s still very much present. He wanted me to get it back. He wanted to get it back to me. It’s him loving me through space and time no matter what.”
Gary’s impact was not only to his family but to his community. That is why Connor feels he now has a new purpose- honoring Gary and helping others.
“It was inspiring to myself to hear how motivated this man was,” Connor said, “what a loving father and husband he was, never looking back in rebuttal. If anything, I hope to practice that and know I can carry those tributes as well.”
Connor wants to return to the waters of Shark Wake Park at least three times each month where he hopes to find more lost memories to bring back home.
Source: WMBF