When Dylan Mermis was invited on a treasure hunt through a group of soon-to-be-demolished buildings in Russell, Kansas, he could never have predicted where one unexpected find would lead him.

“My friend Bobby found out about a local group of buildings set to be demolished due to safety concerns,” Mermis told Newsweek. “The buildings were loaded waist-deep with antiques. There was more than 10,000 square feet of floor space. He paid the owner for permission to go in and take whatever he wanted before the buildings were destroyed.”

Intrigued by what sounded like a “strange scenario,” Mermis and his girlfriend accepted his friend's invitation to come along and “dig through stuff” in the hopes of uncovering buried treasure that might otherwise have been lost in the debris.

Mermis estimates they spent around 19 hours over the course of two days searching through the contents of the buildings.

“I was digging through a room that had all sorts of miscellaneous items in it. I found myself trying to gather up all the magazines I could find,” he said. “Most were big-name magazines like Cosmopolitan, and they ranged in date from 1887 to 1920. While digging for more, I found a box that contained a lot of photos.”

Mermis said most of the photos in the box were “too far gone” to salvage, but a single postcard photograph dating back 109 years was an exception. The soldier in the picture was Hugh H. Hoff, who was writing to his cousin in 1917.

“He had just graduated from his initial officer training,” Mermis said. “He stated that he turned down a first lieutenant position in the Reserves and chose to accept a second lieutenant position in the active-duty Army. This would have been during U.S. involvement in World War I. He chose to take a lower rank and less pay in order to serve on active duty.”

Mermis decided to keep the postcard, figuring there was a good chance he could locate Hoff's surviving family using the information written on it.

When he got home, Mermis googled Hoff's full name. He quickly found a historical profile of Hoff on a genealogy website. He learned that Hugh “Huxley” Hoff was from Edmond, Oklahoma, and not only survived World War I but lived until 1944.

More importantly, Mermis discovered that Hoff had children. He searched for information about Hoff's daughter but learned she had passed away. Through her profile, however, he found information about Hoff's grandchildren.

This led Mermis to Hoff's great-granddaughter.

“I found her on Facebook and sent her a message,” he said. “Thankfully, she responded and was very surprised to hear my story. She got in contact with her aunt, and I ended up sending the photo to her.”

It was the perfect ending to a story that began with an unexpected discovery in the most unlikely of places. Mermis doesn't know how the postcard ended up in that particular building, but he's glad it found its way into the right hands.

“It wasn't the easiest task to accomplish, but it didn't belong in a landfill after being bulldozed. Had it been just a photo, I might not have taken it,” Mermis said. “It just felt like the right thing to do.”

Contact Newsweek editors on this story: Marc Vargas and Emma Lee-Sang