A man who has been out of high school for nearly three decades is proudly wearing his letterman jacket after having been reunited with it.
Like most high school varsity athletes, Jed Mottley couldn’t wait to get his letterman jacket.
Mottley was a student at Chaparral High School in Scottsdale, Arizona nearly three decades ago, but he still remembers going to the store to design his jacket like it was the other day.
“I went down to the store that year and picked everything out,” Mottley told CNN. “You had to kind of design the jacket yourself … but I never saw the final product.”
When it came time to pick up the jacket, his mother didn’t have enough money to pay for it, and he had to accept that even though his teammates had a jacket, he would not.
But 28 years later, while his brother Josh was looking around a thrift shop something both men describe as a sign from their late mother happened.
He found Mottley’s original jacket.
“My mom was one of the most religious people I knew and she always said, ‘I’m going to give you guys a sign from the other side,'” Jed said. “She passed away in 2012 but we never got that sign.”
But in November 2021, Josh was at a thrift store in Pinetop, Arizona about 180 miles away from where the brothers went to school when he came across something that looked oddly familiar.
“So I get into this store and I’m literally walking around and the first thing I see is this bright red jacket hanging,” Josh said.
He was staring at a red letterman jacket that had the name “Jed” and “Class of ’94” stitched on it, as well as other patches.
Josh contacted his brother, who now lives in Los Angeles, and immediately sent him a photo.
“I remember designing it but I never saw the final product, so when I saw it, it was mind blowing,” Jed said.
The time the jacket only cost $25. Jed couldn’t pass it up.
Jed quickly booked a flight to Arizona so he could finally pick up his letterman jacket.
“I just kept looking at it, saying this can’t be real. I can tell you I felt my mom’s presence with us when I met up with him to give it to him,” Josh said.
It’s believed the Jed’s jacket along with hundreds of others were donated to the thrift shop by the owner of the store that originally sold them. His wife had recently passed and due to the pandemic he was unable to keep his store open.
No one knows what happened to Jed’s letterman jacket between when he couldn’t pick it up and when it was donated.
But now that it’s with its intended owner, it doesn’t matter. The brothers are taking it as the sign they had been looking for all along.
“It’s one of those things that something so painful can turn out so beautiful years later and you got to just ride it out, you never know what’s around the corner, life’s a trip,” Jed said.
I love this story. I also believe this was their mother’s way of communicating with them.
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