An unexpected find has brought a Rowlett widow and a City of Carrollton mechanic together. Lisa Holbert and Nick Anselmo met for the first time Thursday, amid tears and hugs, after the mechanic returned a precious memento to Holbert that she thought had been lost forever.
Anselmo was working on a City of Carrollton fire truck when something shiny caught his eye. He wasn’t sure what it was at first.
“I looked under the dash and I was like, ‘Oh cool, a coin, oh this is a cool little fire coin,’ and when I flipped it over I saw the 30 years, I was like, ‘Oh man, someone misses this,'” Anselmo related to NBC 5.
He gave the coin to the Carrollton Fire Department, where he learned the story behind it.
The coin had once belonged, albeit briefly, to Captain Lee Holbert. He was presented the coin in March 2020 in honor of his 30 years of service with the Carrollton Fire Department.
The next day, while riding in one of the fire trucks, Holbert’s coin rolled off the dash and down into a little crack. Though he and fellow fireman Troy Smith looked through the cab to find it, they had no success, so Lee Holbert assumed it had fallen out of the truck and was lying somewhere in the streets of Carrollton.
Six months later, Lee Holbert died. He experienced a medical emergency while on duty and died on September 13, 2020.
Lisa Holbert and her family are grateful to Anselmo for the coin’s return. She greeted him with a hug when the two finally met at the Carrollton Fire Station where Anselmo works.
“I just told him, ‘You’re my hero, you found something that just means so much to me.’ He said, ‘No, your husband was the hero,'” Lisa Holbert told NBC5.
“This is such a big deal for my children and I. For me, it’s a sign that he’s still with me,” she said, as Firehouse.com reported.
