A World War II soldier's long-lost love letters were returned to his daughter 30 years after they were discovered during a home renovation project in New York.

ADVERTISEMENT
Dottie Kearney, 51, said she and her husband were tearing out old walls from the Staten Island fixer-upper they bought in the 1990s when they found a stash of letters written by World War II soldier Claude Smythe to his wife, Marie Smythe.

Kearney said she read the letters multiple times over the years and was recently inspired to try to track down the author's family after seeing TikTok "heirloom investigator" Chelsea Brown on The Kelly Clarkson Show.

Kearney reached out to Brown, who agreed to help with the case.

Brown enlisted the help of genealogy website MyHeritage.com, which was able to identify the Smythes' daughter, Carol Bohlin, living in Vermont.

Brown returned the letters to Bohlin and MyHeritage.com shared photos of the grateful daughter reading the letters for the first time.