Reading Sunday’s paper, Tiffany Paluska suddenly felt as if sucked backward by a time machine.

She was reading an account in this space about a wedding dress recovered right after Washington got walloped by a 2013 tornado. But after more than three years of searching, the finder still couldn’t locate the owner of the dress, which was pictured in this space.

“Hmm,” Paluska said, staring at dress photos. “That looks familiar.”

Stands to reason: she got married in that dress. Three months later, the twister tore apart her newlywed home.

“I figured the dress was just gone,” says Paluska, 34.

And now it’s back, in the same place as when it blew away.

On Aug. 23, 2013, Paluska (nee Huber) of Bartonville wed Scott, a lifelong Washington resident. They moved into 1202 Hampton Road in Washington.

On Nov. 17, ahead of tornado warnings, the couple grabbed their two dogs and pet bird, then hunkered down in the basement as a twister ripped through the neighborhood. When the chaos subsided, they clambered upstairs to find the house destroyed, along with most of the block.

Afterward, like the rest of the neighborhood, the couple tried to salvage and recover as many belongings as possible. Amid the great loss, the wedding dress wasn’t a priority, yet Paluska felt a pang of regret over losing something of such great sentimental value.

“The main thing was, we and the animals were OK,” Paluska says.

Meantime, down the block at 1205 Hampton Road, Karlie Diveley found a wedding dress hanging in a tree in her backyard. Though her family rode out the storm in the basement, the 19-year-old had been gone when the twister struck. But in the aftermath, she helped reunite strewn belongings to owners in the neighborhood.

But she wasn’t acquainted with Paluska. And though she took the dress around the neighborhood, she could find no takers.

“We must’ve just missed each other,” Paluska says. “ … I thought the dress had been ripped apart and blown to Streator or something.”

She and her husband rebuilt at the same address. The Diveley household, however, moved away, with Karlie Diveley joining the Army the next year. Still, via social media and with the help of mom Kenna Nau, the search for the owner continued.

For safekeeping, Nau recently took the dress to David’s Bridal, 5212 N. Big Hollow Road in Peoria. The store was able to confirm that the dress had been sold there. However, with no information available, not even a year of sale, the owner could not be tracked down by store records. Employees there recalled several inquiries about missing dresses, including one woman who’d yet to walk down the aisle — their likeliest suspect regarding the dress found by Diveley.

Recently, Diveley (stationed at Fort Lewis, near Tacoma, Wash.) learned that she will be deployed overseas in April. She hoped to find the owner by then, to accomplish that mission before starting another. Thus, I was contacted to help out.

After Paluska spied the story here Sunday, she called David’s Bridal. As Paluska shared more information, the shop was able to dig into its computers more deeply and confirm the dress as hers, says manager Deb Eeten.

“It was pretty exciting,” Eeten says.

Diveley broke down at the news. She Face-Timed her mom, crying.

“AM IN TEARS!” she admitted on Facebook. “I have found the owner of the wedding dress! I've been searching for her for years and I finally found her. What a great day.”

Nau agreed, telling me Monday, “My work with the tornado tragedy is over. It was the last one item I had to deal with, the one last thing hanging on to me. I can now let go. I am very happy for Karlie.”

Diveley will return to Washington next month to tell her family goodbye before deployment. She plans to get together with Paluska, who brought the dress home Monday.

“It's just really overwhelming,” Paluska says. “I feel really bad that she has been looking for me for three years, and I stopped looking a long time ago.

“She is such a wonderful person. It’s just really awesome that someone would’ve held onto that dress this long.”

PHIL LUCIANO is a Journal Star columnist. He can be reached at pluciano@pjstar.com, facebook.com/philluciano and (309) 686-3155. Follow him on Twitter.com/LucianoPhil.