School finds damaged 25-year old time capsule, makes new one destined for 2050

Twenty-five years doesn’t seem like a long time, but for the elementary-aged kids who buried a time capsule in 2000, it’s been a lifetime.

On Thursday, some of those kids — now adults — joined former teachers and current staff at Weaver Elementary School in Los Alamitos as they fulfilled their quarter-century-old promise to dig up their buried mementos.

It wasn’t easy.

Principal Todd Schmidt said he decided to do the actual digging last week because he didn’t want to be a “Geraldo Rivera,” referring to Rivera’s famous opening of Al Capone’s vault that was empty.

The Weaver capsule wasn’t empty, but it was hard to find and was damaged.

There was a cement monument marking its supposed location — a 500-pound chunk of concrete with a plaque. Workers dug up the cement and chipped away, but couldn’t find the time capsule.

They eventually found it in hard-packed dirt 5 feet underground. Though wrapped in a plastic bag, water had seeped in and damanged most of the items.

Some of the damaged mementoes include a Brittany Spears CD, Harry Potter books, Legos, school shirts, cards with student memories, a Barbie and a local newspaper.

Former teacher Nikki Prutsos said she came up with the idea of a time capsule in 2000 because, “It was the turn of the century and everybody was speculating what the new century was gonna bring.”

“Time capsules were the buzzword of the time,” she said.

The 650 students at the school have spent the last few weeks picking items to put in a new time capsule — scheduled to be opened in 2050.

Items in the new time capsule include their current Toy Story-themed yearbook, a Taylor Swift CD, a flash drive with pictures and the school song and a Chromebook to use the flash drive. They also included COVID masks and Minecraft books.

Schmidt said he’s avoiding headaches for future staff by putting the new time capsule in a locked box in his office.

Weaver Elementary School originally opened in 1960. It closed in the early ’80s because of low enrollment and reopened in 1996.