[Editor’s Note: If you know the subject of this story, contact the newspaper, by telephone at 310.202.0882 or via email at anoonan@thefrontpageonline.com.]
Marcy Lopez Castillo.
Are you out there?
A young woman when last seen in the spring of 1977, Marcy Lopez Castillo would be 58 years old this afternoon.
Mehaul O’Leary is looking for you or for anyone who knows your whereabouts.
The Irishman who owns Joxer Daly’s pub on Washington Boulevard, just east of Sepulveda, has found a piece of your property that you have not seen in 30 years:
Your wallet, containing almost three dozen cards and various forms of identity, plus four surely treasured photos of you.
Her Birthdate
Born on Sept. 24, 1949, Ms. Castillo, according to her most personal papers, lived at 2587 Wellesley, Los Angeles, in the 1970s.
Her California driver’s license said she stood 5 foot 6 and weighed 122 pounds. The expiration date was to be her 28th birthday in 1978.
Inspecting the 35 items in her wallet was a ghostly, museum kind of experience.
A stubby proof of voting tab attests to the fact she voted in a 22nd senatorial district on 8 March, 1977.
Searching for Clues
Who was or is this mystery woman, identified on her driver’s license as Marcy L. Castillo?
How did her wallet come to be lodged behind the wall of a pub?
Possibly she was robbed, it was speculated, and the thief tossed it away when he was finished, through what may, in 1977, have been a window.
To his astonishment, Mr. O’Leary, a candidate for the City Council in the spring elections, uncovered Ms. Castillo’s wallet during a routine repair mission at his pub one week ago.
The discovery was made just off the south end of the bar, in a narrow, low passageway — eight feet by five feet by 12 — that serves as the beer cooler room.
The Journey Begins
Mr. O’Leary led a visitor into the low hanging space. “We were attempting to put a new system on an old wall,” he said while facing west. “As soon as we started to attach, the wall started to peel. Then it turned into the nightmare I was not looking forward to.
“I had to take out all of the layering inside all three walls. We found that everything that was behind — the boards, the support, the dry wall — was rotten.
“I have no idea how long it has been since the walls were touched. I know the previous owner had put in a new facing on the old wall. Otherwise, I have no idea how long anything has been there.
Window of Opportunity
“Once there was a window here. It was in that section, on the ground, between the framing, that we found this wallet.”
A fading light blue, cracked leather, snapped shut, it bulged with well-worn business and other cards that provided tantalizing clues to Ms. Castillo’s life.
Of the four photos, one may be in a Senior Prom kind of setting, and another was a recent (1976) snapshot of her. Two others are from her childhood, one where she was posed atop a pony in 1957.
A Partial Record
Some cards:
A receipt from a bill paid to long extinct General Telephone, dated 8 March 1977.
A charge plate from Lerner Shops.
Another was from the extinct Broadway.
One card to pop out was an oldie from Hughes Markets, now gone for 10 years.
She also shopped at J.C. Penny and bought her gas with a Chevron card.
Her car insurance was with the David Marder Agency.
She may have worked for Beneficial Finance.
Those Were the Days
Mr. O’Leary also found a student ID card for the spring semester of 1976-’77 from the Venice Community Adult School where the principal was J.D. Kegler.
Accompanying it was proof that Ms. Castillo had duly paid the requisite student body fee of 25 cents.
A County USC Medical Center patient ID card.
A business card from a chiropodist, Dr. Henry W. Merwick, 932 Crenshaw Blvd.
A First
“I have never come across anything like this,” Mr. O’Leary said. “It makes you think, first of all, is the person still out there? Was she the victim of a crime?
“I called the Culver City P.D. to make sure it was not a missing person. But they have not called back.”
