Marcie Callewaert knew her lost wallet would wash up one day.
The Tofino resident has been living in Clayoquot Sound for 10 years and never gave up hope searching for her beloved wallet.
"I had really high hopes that before the end of the winter, it would end up washing in,” she says.
To get to her Tofino property, she has to use a canoe and a boat. Back in June 2023, she was moving from the boat to the canoe when she heard a splash. Little did she know at the time, the splash was her wallet falling into the ocean.
"I didn't realize what the splash was until later, when the pocket was open on my bag and I realized what was missing,” says Callewaert.
She returned to the area and combed the beach, searching high and low to find the dark green wallet. It was the same colour as the water.
A local diver also went looking but turned up empty-handed.
“The eelgrass was so thick that he really had no visual,” she says. “When he came up after an hour, he told me he had been using his hands to pat down the seafloor.”
Then, on Feb. 14, while on a walk with her dogs, Callewaert spotted the wallet.
"There it was, like right in front of me,” she recalls.
She had to use a knife to cut through the salt water-logged wallet; luckily, everything was still inside, including her radio operator licence.
Callewaert shared the experience on social media. She garnered an impressive 7.4 million views for just one TikTok video.
“It was insane,” she says. “I just posted it for people that already knew about it and it blew up.”
She’s had people questioning if the video is real, but explains that coastal life is a little different than what people might be used to.
"This stuff does happen for us out here, if you're in the same places all the time.”
If it hadn't washed up this month, she believes it would have been gone for good.
"I think it was stuck within the eelgrass and the sand with how much sand infiltrated it,” she says, noting there are strong southeast winds where she lives and stuff from the ocean bottom gets pulled up during low tides.
"I do feel very lucky."
Callewaert is considering using the $10 that was still in her wallet to buy a lottery ticket.
As for the salty wallet, she plans to keep it.
"It's definitely sticking around,” she says. “The coins and the stickers are going to end up becoming like good luck charms of some sort.”
