Elizabeth LaFleur

elafleur@greenvillenews.com

An Ohio woman was blown away by the kindness of a South Carolina stranger who returned her missing purse, and all of its contents, a month after she lost it.

Teri Kovach was traveling from Ohio to Florida around Valentine's Day when she stopped in Greenville to visit friends. While she was here, she visited the Walmart store on Pelham Road and left her purse in the store.

"It had my life in it. It was a big purse," Kovach said. "I mean, it had everything."

Kovach said she canceled all of her cards and gave up the hope of finding the purse. "My heart was broken when I lost all of that stuff."

A month later, she received a call from an employee at that Walmart store, saying she'd found the purse and wanted to return it to Kovach. Kovach said the woman told her she had a hard time finding her number, despite the contents of her bag. She ended up calling a number on an insurance card inside the purse and getting Kovach's number from that company.

"I'm just totally dumbfounded," Kovach said. "This day in age, when does something like this happen?"

Kovach said she plans to reward the woman who found the purse, but she also wanted the Greenville community to know that this act of kindness happened right here.

"I don't think I would've gotten my purse back like this if I'd left it anywhere else," Kovach said.