Polly Thomas spends her days sifting through items that have been confiscated as evidence for the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office.
As the evidence custodian, Thomas’s job is to purge evidence once a criminal case has been dismissed or when prosecuting attorneys allow the items to be auctioned off or returned to their rightful owners. When looking through evidence tubs a few months ago, Thomas, who until recently was known as Polly Davin, came across items that she knew couldn’t be ignored.
After three separate burglary cases involving the same suspect had been closed recently, Thomas began to look through more than 100 different items that had been stolen. The items were taken from a storage shed and Thomas said it doesn’t seem like the burglar was looking for anything in particular.
“When you’re clearing out a storage locker, you’re not looking at what you’re taking,” said Thomas.
Among the items found were an old camera, a slide viewer, comic books, two autographed baseballs and a trading card collection. But those finds weren’t what caught the attention of Thomas.
While looking through the tubs, Thomas found a number of photos, including a family portrait that looks to have been taken in the early 1900s. Another picture that looks like it could have been taken in the 1980s shows a man in a flight simulator. A number of the photos depicted airplanes, which suggests the owner might have been a flight buff.
“I’ve done this for a little over a year now and this is the first time I’ve had a situation like this with irreplaceable items,” said Thomas.
Thomas is hoping that she can reunite the photos with the family they belong to. She says she will keep the photos for the next 90 days and place classified ads in the newspaper in hopes that the owner will come forward. If the items are not claimed, they will be auctioned off, destroyed, or become the county’s property. Thomas is someone who enjoys tracing family histories herself, adding to her reluctunce to discard the photos.
“When you’re talking about old family photographs, I’m a genealogist myself. I have a soft spot for this kind of thing,” she said.
With more than 8,000 items in the Sheriff’s evidence room right now, Thomas is hopeful these photos will catch the attention of someone who knows where they belong.
“I just don’t have the heart to destroy it (the evidence). Some things are replaceable and some things aren’t. Hopefully these items will ring a bell with people before they go to auction,” she said. “If the owners aren’t interested in them, maybe their grand-kids would be.”
Advertisements for unclaimed evidence that the Sheriff’s Office is getting rid of can be found in the classified section of the Daily World in print or online. For more information, or to claim or inquire about items previously in evidence, call the Grays Harbor County Sheriff’s Office at 360-249-3711.
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