Investigation Into Fire Yields a Surprising Find

As Christine D'Alessandro walked home Monday morning, in shock over the fire at her beloved Eastern Market, she saw a D.C. police officer knocking at her front door.

"Are you Christine D'Alessandro?" the officer asked her.

"Yes, this is my house," she answered, juggling her 2-year-old on her hip.

"Did you lose your wallet recently?" he asked.

She told him it was stolen six weeks ago.

"Well," he said, "we found it on top of the market this morning."

D'Alessandro stopped. She couldn't believe someone had found her wallet. Then she realized something else.

"I was apparently a suspect in the big Eastern Market fire," D'Alessandro, 42, said yesterday.

That didn't last long.

"I think he made some sort of quick decision I wasn't worth pursuing," she said.

Somebody must have stolen the wallet and then tossed it on the market's roof, the officer surmised.

Within 10 minutes, another officer came by with the tan Coach leather wallet. It was in good shape except for some ashes in the change compartment.

She never thought she would see it again after it was stolen from the Southeast branch of the D.C. Public Library six weeks ago. She had set it down on a counter in the library, and as she tried to manage her sons and their books, she walked away from the counter, leaving the wallet.

After a few paces, she realized what she had done and turned around to retrieve it. But it was gone.

Little did she know that she had walked right below it several times a day when she passed by the market. Or that it could survive a three-alarm fire that ravaged one of the city's treasured landmarks.

"Nothing was melted," D'Alessandro said of her wallet.

The $120 in cash was missing, but the credit cards and pictures of her sons, Elliot, 2, and Steven, 6, were in perfect condition.