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Man Finds Wallet 40 Years Later at New York Times Building

By DNAinfo Staff on February 21, 2011 10:05am  | Updated on February 21, 2011 10:58am

A security guard at the former New York Times building found and returned a wallet to Rudolph Resta, 40 years after he lost it in the building's coat closet.
A security guard at the former New York Times building found and returned a wallet to Rudolph Resta, 40 years after he lost it in the building's coat closet.
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AP Photo/Shoun Hill

By Gabriela Resto-Montero

DNAinfo Reporter/Producer

MIDTOWN — A wallet returned last fall to a man who lost it at the Times Building 40 years ago has become a time capsule of old New York.

Rudolph Resta, 77, who worked as an art director for the New York Times, lost his wallet at the paper's former headquarters at 229 West 43rd Street in 1970 when he put it in his coat pocket, the New York Times reported.

Decades later, Jose Cisneros, 46, a security guard at the building, found the butter calfskin wallet hidden in a gap between an old window and a masonry seal, the Times reported.

Inside the wallet, time hadn't passed at all.

Resta found his old green and white American Express card, his social security card authorized by the now-defunct Federal Security Agency, candids of his sons playing in the yard of his former Brooklyn home and a glamorous photo of his wife, Angela, the paper reported.

Also tucked in Resta's billfold was a 1968 Times article on Senator Ted Kennedy's eulogy of his brother, Senator Bobby Kennedy.

The former newspaperman said that the words, "Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not," have stuck with him over the years, even if the clip didn't.

Everything in the wallet was just as Resta had last seen it — except for the cash. That was long gone.