Update

Lily is feeling better but still has a sore upper right arm.  She was in good spirits this morning when I was there visiting her and she seemed happy to join the group in music therapy.

As for Emily's purse we received a call late the following afternoon that her purse had been found.  The woman from Springfield said her daughter was walking to her grandmother's house and found Emily's purse and contents along with another purse in the creek.  This young girl was kind enough to pick up all the contents and call me.

Ironically when I had been out in Tucson visiting Emily in November I had insisted she put an index card in her purse and car with emergency numbers on it and that is the card that enabled them to find the owner of the purse.

We drove that evening out to Springfield to pick up the purse from the nice family who found it and discovered that the other purse was not Emily's friend Jordans.  Searching through that person we found that the owner was an Elaine K.... from Columbus Ohio.

On the way home I searched through Elaine's bag and found a sheet of phone numbers she had listed and called her at home.  She informed me that she, her husband, and a foreign exchange student from Indonesia had been out hiking the same day as the girls and their blue VW was also broken into.  However, not only was her purse taken, but their luggage (they were in town visiting their daughter) and their foreign exchange student's bookbag. 

She said that earlier that day they received a call from someone else in Springfield because their exchange student's bookbag was found on a street.  The thieves had left his Indonesia ID in the bookbag thankfully.

While in Springfield they decided to drive around on their own and found another bookbag with a bunch of books in it which they turned over to the police.

We made arrangments for Elaine to come the next morning to pick up her stuff.  In the meantime when we arrived home I spread out all the contents of both Emily's and Elaine's purse on towels to dry.  All their misc stuff was present along with their credit cards.  The only items missing were their licenses, giftcards, and money.  Neither of them had much money in their purses.  The thieves did not take the student's graphing calculator which just shows how smart they were.

Of course, the keys to our car were still in there after we just spent $200 to have a new set made and unbelieveably they still worked after getting all wet.

Emily's leather purse also dried out pretty well and you would never know it had laid in water for awhile.

The next day Elaine, her husband, and the student from Indonesia came.  They were very pleasant and the student was very cute.  He kept taking pictures of our Christmas tree and nativity scene as he was Muslim and not familiar with these things.  Apparently Elaine and her husband do not celebrate Christmas. 

They were very appreciative that I laid her pictures, cards, and other items out to dry.  One of them was a paper with words in other languages.  She said that was the word butterfly written in every language of places she had visited.  Her husband also let drop that her sister is married to the Nobel Peace prize winner from last year??  They apparently were in Switzerland to visit when he received his award.  He said he was very proud of that as he was the one who sponsored him from India.  They were a very interesting couple.

Anyway we reported the find to the police and that is the last we heard about the incident.