Woman finds ‘insane’ blast from the past in nightstand bought at charity shop

Sometimes you get more than you bargained for when you head to your local charity shop – that was certainly the case for one San Diego woman.

Valencia Walker brought home a set of secondhand nightstands from her local Goodwill store only to find that one of them contained an extraordinary blast from the past.

Emptying out the drawers she found a crumpled piece of paper on which was scrawled her family’s old landline and her mum’s mobile number.

Explaining the discovery on TikTok Walker said: “The weirdest thing just happened, and I’m not making this up. I literally don’t care how many people comment and say: ‘Oh my God, this was staged.’

“I bought these nightstands at Goodwill today...my heart’s like a little trembly. This is really cool. So I bought them each for $12.99 and I go through the drawers and empty stuff out and I find this little crumpled up paper.

“It legit says: ‘Carly’s home number and mum’s cellphone number.’ It has my mum’s cellphone number and our home phone number from, like, 15 years ago.”

She went on: “My youngest sister’s name is Carly and that’s our home phone number.

“We have not had a home phone, probably like ten to 15 years. But what are the chances of that?”

Understandably, she captioned the clip: “The universe is crazy.”

Digging through the drawers Walker found more old papers and notes ValenciaVibing/TikTok

Her clip racked up more than 300,000 views and 60,000 likes in three days, as fellow TikTokers branded the finding “trippy” and “insane”, or shared their own similar anecdotes.

“I checked out a book when I was in high school in 2014, I opened it up and it had a bookmark with my sister’s name and handwriting. She graduated in 2006,” one reminisced.

Another wrote: “I found a wedding band in the middle of Sydney years ago. Then my mum calls saying my pop is distraught as he lost his wedding band. It was his.”

Other users questioned the veracity of Walker’s story, prompting her to issue further updates in the saga.

Following some careful sleuthing, she managed to discover the identity of the girl – now woman  – who had written the note, and tracked her down on Facebook.

After finding her surname and firstname on separate pieces of papers also stuffed within the nightstands’ drawers, Walker sent her a message explaining what she’d found.

The woman agreed the whole thing was “crazy”.

Walker pointed out that the chances of finding the note were about 3.3 million to oneValenciaVibing/TikTok

Responding to comments from viewers, Walker ended her story: "Some people were saying that it’s not that uncommon if you thrifted it in the same city you grew up in.

"San Diego County has a population of 3.3 million, so I would say there’s a pretty slim chance of this happening.”