The Olympic gold medal reported stolen from USA Women’s Volleyball player Jordyn Poulter in May has been found and handed over to police.
Noe Hernandez, 49, and his wife, Maria Carrillo, 50, who have lived in Anaheim around 30 years, turned in the medal to the Anaheim Police Department on Monday night, June 27.
The department is making arrangements to give the medal back to Poulter, who won it along with her team at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, after she and her team return to Anaheim, Sgt. Shane Carringer said.
Carrillo, who works at Carrillas Income Tax Services on State College Boulevard in Anaheim, said she found a McDonald’s bag with a small black bag inside it behind the building while cleaning up.
The back of the building faces a parking lot and homeless people hang around and leave trash there.
Anybody could have walked by or left trash, Carillo said.
Inside that small bag was the gold medal, which she thought at first was a toy or replica.
“I opened the small bag and I see a black package,” Carrillo said. “I didn’t know if it was real or not, but it was heavy.”
She called her husband at his barbershop, Noel Barbershop, down the street. He would ask around at his shop, where police officers sometimes get a cut.
A client getting a haircut said had caught news coverage about the stolen medal. Carrillo and her husband, whose first language is Spanish, don’t watch much English television.
Carrillo looked up coverage online and found the department’s number.
“I was surprised — how is an important medal in the trash?” Maria Carrillo said. “I think that it is really important to the lady.”
The medal and other items, including a passport, were stolen from the center console in Poulter’s car on May 25. Both the men’s and women’s indoor national teams are based in Anaheim.
Poulter was unavailable for comment on Wednesday; her team was scheduled for a match in Canada.
But it was the medal the setter who started on the Olympic team really wanted back, with the team holding a press conference after it was stolen to drum up attention to help retrieve it.
Two weeks later, police made an arrest in the case: Jordan Fernandez, 31, was charged on suspicion of first-degree residential burglary, second-degree vehicle burglary, felony identity theft and felony possession of narcotics.
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