Around 16 days after tornados traveled through the New London area, Terry Hilbert, owner of Hilby’s Restaurant and Sports Bar, received an interesting letter in the mail.

The letter was from someone in Mishicot, which is around 60 miles from New London. The handwritten letter read as follows:

“Thought you may find the enclosed of interest. Found while cleaning up downed trees from our yard. We live three miles north of Mishicot, WI. Hope you had minimal damage during the six tornado outbreak.”

Included with the letter was a checkbook receipt from Hilby’s business.

How does a checkbook receipt from New London end up in tree branches in Mishicot?

Hilbert said he stores his business records in a shed on the property where his home is located. That shed was destroyed by one of the tornados in the area Aug. 7. When the shed was destroyed, the tornado also scattered the contents of the shed.

“My shed and the shed next to it are totally gone,” he said. “It was a mess. It’s still a mess.”

Once he received the letter, Hilbert said he immediately found a map to see how far Mishicot is from New London.

“As a crow flies, that’s 60 miles,” Hilbert said. “It went up and dropped in somebody else’s yard. That was really interesting, how far this stuff really goes.”

Not only was the checkbook receipt returned, but the person who returned it also taped it back together. The only identification on the checkbook receipt was “New London Lanes,” so the person had to of looked up the address in order to mail it back.

“It had to be an older person because nobody else would take the time,” he said. “[Anybody else] they would have picked it up and threw it in the garbage.”

Hilbert said he did call the person and left a message, letting him know he thought it was neat that he mailed the checkbook receipt to him.

“I never would have thought of it,” he said. “No way, that anything of mine could have gone that far.”