(CNN) When your wallet is stolen, you probably don't expect to get it back -- especially after 75 years.

Betty Sissom, 89, received the gift of a lifetime last week when her wallet from the mid-1940s was returned to her.

Sissom's wallet, along with more than a dozen others, was discovered when a congregation in Centralia, Illinois, was converting the former Centralia High School building into a church. Pastor Seth Baltzell said a plumber found the wallets stashed in the wall of a girls' bathroom.

"We've been working on this building for six months. I've been kind of waiting for that really cool thing that nobody's seen in the last 75 or 100 years to pop out," Baltzell said.

The pastor believed that the wallets were stolen 75 years ago and wanted to try to reunite them with their owners. He posted pictures on Facebook along with names from some of the IDs in them. Much to his surprise, the post has been shared more than 3,000 times.

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