When your fifth grade teacher sends you a homework assignment for the first time since 1978, you sit up and listen. That’s how this whole story started: a note from Mrs. Davis (yes, I still call her that) telling me a handmade Hanukkah bookmark with a boy’s face on it had turned up in a donated book at the recent St. Louis Jewish Used Book Sale.

She gave me an assignment: find Nate.

The hunt begins

Once the story ran, the responses came quickly. More than 20 readers reached out with guesses, tips and “I think I know that kid” messages. The real breakthrough was recognizing the backdrop: the Jacob’s Ladder art installation in the May Chapel at Congregation Temple Israel. That clue narrowed the mystery to TI’s religious school in the 1990s.

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Then came the email that solved it. “Marci Mayer Eisen texted me earlier today and asked if this is ‘my Nate’?” wrote attorney Rob Litz. “This bookmark was made by my son Nate Litz in 1st grade at TI’s Religious School in Mrs. Schwartz’s class. Nate is now 37 and lives in St. Louis.”

That was the “aha” moment. Homework completed.

Meeting the boy behind the bookmark

When I spoke with Nate, he instantly recognized it. “I remember that bookmark very clearly,” he said. “The moment I saw it, I recognized myself. I don’t explicitly remember making it, but I remember using it. It was my go-to bookmark at home.”

In 1994, seven-year-old Nate was into soccer and computers. “I took my first computer apart when I was probably four or five,” he told me. “By six or seven, I was building my own PCs.” Like most kids of his era, he played “Oregon Trail” endlessly, but his favorite was “The Logical Journey of the Zoombinis,” a math and logic game that his entire class obsessed over.

A childhood rooted in TI

Nate remembered Temple Israel vividly. “I’ve got really good memories from Sunday school at TI,” he said. “Ms. Schwartz was my teacher then. My family was always there — for services, for weddings, it was a big part of my childhood.”

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He figures the bookmark left his house during a move around 2000, when his family left Creve Coeur for Clayton. More recently, he said, it could have resurfaced when the family donated hundreds of books after his grandfather’s passing in 2023. “It feels like it’s been traveling a long time,” he said.

From hot sauce to high-tech

Today, Nate is a data center networking architect with World Wide Technology, where he’s worked for more than a decade. He also once ran his own successful hot sauce brand, Sriracha Granada, which grew into hundreds of retailers before he sold it. “It was an absolute blast,” he said. “Seeing something I started in my kitchen sold across the country was incredible.”

Returning the bookmark

For all his technical focus, Nate admits this rediscovery struck a chord. “I tend to lead a fairly minimalist life, but this means a lot to me,” he said. “I remember that time period fondly. It’s going to have a great place on my shelf of memories at home.”

And so, thanks to a volunteer sorter, a teacher who still gives me homework, and a community that loves a good mystery, the bookmark is going home.