A former Casemates prison nurse was yesterday reunited with her leather wallet 18 years after it was stolen.Ace underwriter Peter Riihiluoma and his colleagues found V. Christine Pearman’s wallet in a bathroom they were tearing down at the old Dockyard prison during a community service day organised by their company.One hundred and twenty Ace employees took part in 11 different volunteer projects during Ace’s global day of service last October. The events were organised in celebration of the company’s 25th anniversary.One of the projects was helping Edward Harris, executive director of the National Museum of Bermuda, clear out the old Casemates prison so it could be turned into a museum.The prison sits on the southern side of Dockyard and has historical value. A former military barracks for Royal Marines, it was built by convicts in the 1830s. The prison closed in 1995 when Westgate Correctional Facility was opened nearby.“Me and a partner were taking apart the old prison bathrooms,” said Mr Riihiluoma. “We were knocking down things with a sledgehammer. It was very hard work. Along with a number of other things, the wallet fell out of the wall.“There were socks and little vials it could have been crack vials. It was cemented in the wall.”The wallet contained a number of items including an identification card reading Valerie Christine Pearman.Ms Pearman was the senior nursing officer at Casemates from 1988 to 1995. She is currently working at the Mid-Atlantic Wellness Institute.“I remember when it was stolen,” she said yesterday. “It was 18 years ago. It was sitting on a ledge in the nursing office. I saw a prisoner over by the ledge. There was no reason for him to be over there but he said he was looking at the cruise ships in the harbour. The nursing office in Casemates had a very nice view.”When the wallet was discovered missing, the prisoner’s cell was searched, but nothing was found. She wasn’t surprised that it was cemented into the wall.“The prisoners would do work around Casemates, so they would have access to cement stuff,” said Ms Pearman. “They would be doing work such as repairs around the grounds. They were in the kitchen.”Ms Pearman heard that her wallet had been found through old-fashioned word-of-mouth.“No-one called me about the wallet,” she said. “A lady who used to work in the prison when I was there was getting the paper from the Port Royal gas station. She said ‘Ms Pearman, someone from Ace said they found your wallet while they were working at Casemates and it had your ID in it’. So I telephoned Ace to find out. I wanted to see the wallet. I was then told to call Dr Harris. He handed it over. He said it wasn’t in too good a condition and I said, ’Well, it was a lot of years. It was Italian leather from [former Front Street store HA&E] Smith’s.”Ms Pearman may now help Dr Harris to identify different areas of the prison.“Sometimes they don’t know what areas they are cleaning out and where certain things were,” she said.When the wallet was returned, it was like a trip down memory lane for the former prison nurse. The money was long gone from the wallet, but her driver’s licence was still there, along with a blood donor’s card, her daughter’s MarketPlace Cookie Club card, her cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) instructor’s card, a passport photo and many other bits and pieces from her life at that time.“I want to thank Peter for finding it,” she said. “I was aware of who took it, but we couldn’t find it. Of course the person in question denied it. It was a prison, after all.”