Michael McCormick / WYFF-4

Jeri Cox Chastain's wallet was stolen 23 years ago. It was found this week.

A wallet stolen from a single mom working two jobs was returned this week in mint condition -- 23 years and a "whole lifetime of changes" since it was taken from her.

Jeri Cox Chastain, 52, still lives in Reidville, S.C., where she resided when the wallet was stolen in 1990, but not much else is the same: The hospital where she did medical transcription has closed down, and she now has her own business; her son, then 5 years old, is now 28; and she's remarried, which means she now has a different last name.

"There's been a whole lifetime of changes. My son's grown up. I've grown up, and out," Chastain said, laughing.

The wallet, and her old life, had become a distant memory -- until Wednesday afternoon, when a police officer from the neighboring city of Spartanburg called her.

"He said he had some property of mine that had been recovered, and I could not imagine what had been lost," Chastain said. "He said, 'I have a blast from your past. I'm holding your navy blue--' and I said, 'My wallet.' And he said, 'Yes, ma'am, your wallet.'"

The next day, she went to the police station to claim her wallet. Inside were photos of Chastain's then-5-year-old son, his birth certificate, their social security cards, her driver's license -- all  items she had replaced, except for the pictures.

wyff4.com

A baby picture of Jeri Cox Chastain's son that was found in her stolen wallet.

"It's in perfect condition. The pictures are perfect," she said. "There was one in there of him and I when he was three months old. I don't have any other copies of that one. I had forgotten I had those. Or forgotten that I didn't have them, as the case would be."

The wallet was found in the ceiling of a women's restroom in a building a couple miles from where the hospital had been, reported WYFF.com, an NBC affiliate. The hospital, Doctors' Memorial, closed in 1994. 

Chastain always suspected a certain co-worker had stolen her wallet. On the day it disappeared, the employee had said she was having trouble paying her bills. 

"I said [to her], I'm a single mom with two jobs, I don't have any money," she said. Chastain left her desk -- a broom closet that had been converted into a tiny office space -- to grab a snack, she said, only to come back to find the wallet gone. 

Incidentally, from 2001 to 2003, she worked in the building where the wallet was found -- on the same floor.

"All that time, I had no idea. That is the weirdest thing," she said. "I don't really know how it got from Doctors' Memorial to that building. I don't know if somebody cleaned the building at Doctors, or vice-versa."

The man who found Chastain's wallet also found another wallet in the ceiling tiles in the same building a couple of years ago that had been reported stolen in 1996, officers told her. 

Chastain hopes to thank him.

"He made the decision to call and find who it belonged to," she said.

On these Colorado ski slopes, wounded veterans are not only learning a sport they once thought was out of reach, they’re also gaining confidence to rebuild their lives.

Read: Amputee vets on the slopes: 'They find their new normal here' 

“The thing about skiing, once I'm up there on the mountain, I'm on equal footing with everybody else,” Col. Gregory Gadson told TODAY during his fourth trip to the Vail slopes since losing both legs in Bagdad in 2007.

Gadson is a graduate of the Vail Veterans Program, which has taught wounded warriors to ski for the past ten years.

Lt. Col. David Rozelle, a program co-founder, noted that amputees used to face bleak prognosis in the early years of the recent conflicts abroad.

“Now they're making it back,” said Rozelle, who refused to give up one of his favorite sports after he lost part of a leg in Baghdad in 2003. “They get in this program and they find their new normal here.”

Cheryl Jenson, the program's executive director, said she initially came on board thinking the program was strictly about ski and snowboard instruction.

“But what we realized, there's a lot more healing that takes place here, on and off the mountain,” she said.

Last May, Petty Officer Taylor Morris lost parts of all four limbs in Afghanistan. Today, he’s hitting the Colorado slopes.

“It’s a great feeling to go out and snowboard on your own,” he said.

His girlfriend, Danielle Kelly, said the program gives the couple inspiration about their future.

“This offers us an activity that we'll be able to do years down the road and hopefully one day with our kids,” she said. “We’ll be able to go out and ski.”

Retired Capt. Melissa Stockwell, who lost part of her leg when she was injured in Baghdad in 2004, is now a veteran of the program.

“I was pretty wobbly at first, you know, on this the bunny hill.  By the end of the week, I was up and flying down,” she said. “And I never really felt so free in my entire life.”

More: See Kevin Tibbles's 2004 visit to Vail Veterans 
Veteran's gift to soldier's girlfriend goes viral 
Police officer's act of kindness caught on camera 

A 7-year-old has a simple message, relayed on four Post-it notes, that he hopes will reach troubled soldiers contemplating suicide.

“Ask for help!!!” writes John Murray Jr. in black marker, one Post-it note for each word and the exclamation points.

Statistics released earlier this week revealed that the suicide rate among veterans and active U.S. soldiers is 22 per day, almost double the rate of civilians.

Read the original story from WAFF's Charles Molineaux

“When they don’t have any broken arms or legs, and no blood, you can’t see the sadness inside them,” the boy explained.

John was moved to action after learning about suicide on a poster he saw at an Army medical center in Hunstville, Ala. The boy was passing time reading random words on the waiting room walls when he spotted the unfamiliar term.

“I asked Mom 'what's that ‘S’ word? She started walking fast,” he said. "And finally she bent down and said, 'That word is ‘suicide’ and it's when ... someone ends their own life.'"         

The discovery prompted John to write a message directly to the troubled serviceman.

"There's other people that care about you and want you to ask for help,” the boy said.

John’s mother, Ingrid Murray, wrote about her son’s efforts in a letter to Army Surgeon General Patricia Horoho, who called the story beautiful and “a lesson for all of us.”

She then put the boy’s Post-it note story on the Army’s website.

"I don't think I've ever thought of it in those simple terms,” said the boy’s father, Sgt. John Murray Sr. “And maybe sometimes we try to over-analyze." 

His son, meanwhile, has only one goal for his message: "It becomes true."

More: Couple hits lottery twice in one weekend, wins over $1M 
Couple honored for longest marriage 
Blind skateboarder inspires fans in 'Brave' video