A 90-Year-Old widow from Sherman Oaks got an early Valentine's Day delivery from her late husband.
Al Escobedo, a contractor, was hired to do a painting job at a home and found a box of love letters. Over a hundred of them. The new homeowners told him to dispose of anything left behind by the previous owners. But in his heart, he knew he couldn't throw them away and was going to try to locate the owners.
"It's really an incredible love story, right from the beginning," Merryl Alpert told Eyewitness News after reading several of the letters. "It just brings me back to the old days. I'm young again. I read these letters and I'm young again."
Alpert was shocked when the long-lost collection of letters she and her husband David sent to each other between 1948-1953 were found and kept for all these years.
Escobedo read the letters and knew he had to return them to the lovebirds. He just didn't know who to return them to.
"I just thought of that movie 'The Notebook,'" said Al Escobedo, the man who found all the letters. "I'm like, I'm gonna try to find their family members and I was able to find them."
Alpert stored the letters in the couple's Beverly Hills home for roughly 50 years. When they moved in 2007, the collection of love notes was left behind. Alpert thought they were thrown away and she would never see them again.
But Escobedo and his daughter kept the letters for 15 years hoping to one day get them back to the lovebirds. But the day came when he spotted David Alpert's obituary online and the mystery was solved.
"I didn't have the heart to throw them away," he said.
Escobedo finally got the letters back to Alpert on Thursday and she gave him a big hug.
"I'm 90 years old. You just brought me back to life," she told him. "I'm starting all over."
Source: ABC7