If Mary Pat Sigler’s denim purse could talk, it would tell quite a story.
If a movie were to be made, the title could be “The Mystery of the Traveling Purse.”
Either way, the carryall has logged some 395 miles alone over the last two months and is now safely back on Sigler’s shoulder.
Sigler, a Winthrop resident, lost her handbag near Marble Mountain Aug. 30. Mark Smith found it in the middle of the street near a 7-Eleven on Filbert Road in Bothell — some 180 miles away — two weeks ago. (See map.)
Smith’s mother, Pam Moshier, then mailed the pouch back to Sigler — about 215 miles away in Winthrop.
“It took quite a route,” said Sigler, who received her purse Oct. 27. “How it ended up on a street in Bothell … where it went all time in between, I have no clue.
“I thought it was nice and thoughtful of them to go to the trouble (to return it). They could have thrown it in the trash.”
Aside from money missing, Sigler retrieved two credit cards, two checkbooks, a coded car key, family pictures, driver license and insurance card.
“(Mark) brought it home and called some number out of her purse to find out if she was OK,” Moshier said. “He saw that the woman (on the driver license) was his mother’s age and thought someone had taken her.”
Sigler is fine, and a bit perplexed about the whole scenario.
Here’s what happened: On Aug. 30, she left the purse on top of her truck after grabbing a treat for her dog at a restaurant. She went across the street to dispose of some trash and then headed home.
“I’d kind of given up on it,” Sigler said after losing the purse. “I assumed my purse was in a ditch on the highway anywhere.”
And when the mail arrived Oct. 27? “It’s just a nice outcome,” she added.
