2nickels.jpg

Carrie and Chester Hughes' nickel.

TRENTON -- To a coin collector, a 1936 Buffalo nickel is worth more than face value. It could fetch up to 40 or 50 cents depending on the condition.

The one in Chester Hughes' desk drawer in Arizona is priceless.

It's the very one a young Carrie Zane Mason plunked into a public telephone in an old bus terminal on Willow Street on Feb. 15, 1952 - to call police as a man attacked her.

Hughes was a young Trenton patrolman then, and he was close by.

"When I was notified of the call, I was on Broad Street near Perry Street which means that I was 3 1/2 blocks away from the Lambertville Bus Terminal. I ran as fast as I could to the scene and arrived before any other police," Hughes wrote recently.

"I found it empty except for a violent man who was trying to pull a woman from the telephone booth, which was Carrie. I arrested him at gunpoint."

Chester and Carrie Hughes.

Hughes saved Mason, and few hours later, since she'd missed the last bus out of town, he was driving her home to her family's home in Stockton - and falling in love.

They would marry, have eight children, and he rose to be a police captain, before retiring in 1982 and retiring to Arizona.

Carrie Zane Mason Hughes died in September at the age of 84, and Chester moved into a new residence.

And that's when his son Mark found the nickel, wrapped in a cloth and tucked away in Carrie's belongings - saved all those years. Hughes said in the hectic move, the nickel could have thrown away, and lost forever.

Since it was an emergency call, the operator returned the nickel to Carrie after she made the call.

The nickel means so much to Hughes, he decided to write down his feelings about it and sent it to the Times of Trenton, titling it "The Lucky Nickel."

"Everything in the story revolves around the nickel," Hughes wrote. "If God did not provide Carrie with that nickel, she would not have been able to call the police for help and also could have been seriously injured and would not have met me if I did not rescue her!

The couple were married for 63 years and their eight children gave them 14 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Hughes, now 89, said from Arizona recently that the entire incident was a series of amazing coincidences. The man attacking his future wife was a state hospital escapee that Hughes himself had arrested a year before for molesting two children in the old Lincoln Theater.

Chester Hughes, Trenton police.

After the police paperwork was completed, he went to his car - at the bus terminal.

"I never parked there before and that was where Carrie was waiting for the bus. She informed me she missed the last bus and I asked her if I can take her home. She agreed to let me take her home when she found out I was not married," Hughes wrote.

Hughes - a Trenton native and son of a police captain - said he'd never been to Stockton, and as he drove her home, "I said to myself, she's a pretty interesting girl. I'd like to know her some more."

Carrie later told Chester she told her mother, "I'm going to marry him," and her mother replied, "You'll never see him again," Hughes recalled with a laugh.

Hughes tracked Carrie down at her job in the Broad Street Bank building and their first date was square dancing at the YMCA.

All of it, Hughes said, was not really coincidental, but, he believes, God working through a desperate young woman and her last nickel.

"It was a very serious part of our plan," Hughes said. "Without that nickel we would have never met, or been married," Hughes says, "No way could we not have had that happen without God's plan."

Kevin Shea may be reached at kshea@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter@kevintshea. Find NJ.com on Facebook.