For six years, Avis Kirk had been wondering: What the heck did I do with that planner?
The small leather book that held her checkbook, credit cards, drivers license and about $60 in cash vanished without a trace after the former Sands Casino Hotel food service worker set it down near the buffet for a few moments in 2001.
"I couldn't even imagine where it went," she said. "I thought it had been stolen. So many people helped me look for it."
But it wasn't until Ed Ensman, a demolition crew supervisor helping tear down the former Sands building spotted it in the rubble on Aug. 30 that the mystery was solved.
"We were doing interior demolition, tearing down some inside walls, and one of the Bobcat front-end loaders we use was right next to a wall," he said. "I was watching it pretty closely, and as soon as the Bobcat moved away, I saw it on the ground."
He speculated that the planner fell behind a low wall when Kirk put it down, and was simply overlooked as new walls were put up.
Ensman picked it up, saw that it had money and personal papers inside it, and contacted officials with Pinnacle Entertainment, the Las Vegas-based company that will build a new $1.5 billion casino on the Sands site once demolition is finished.
They used old personnel records to track Kirk down by contacting a reference she had listed on her employment application, and with whom she had fallen out of contact.
"The most exciting part is that I'm back in touch with my friend after almost seven years," Kirk, who lives in State College, Pa., said of her reference. "We plan to get together again very soon. Life is amazing."
It wasn't the first unusual discovery at the former Sands building this year. Last spring, Pinnacle workers discovered $17,000 -- most of it in coins -- that had fallen under or around the casino's 2,350 slot machines over the past three decades.