Couple’s Quest for Lost Unicorn Results in Return

Ben and Jean Means were hoping that fliers that had worked for many pet owners would work for them in their search for their 75-pound, 4 1/2-foot mythical beast.

The hand-carved white unicorn with golden horn and a brown mane and tail that they had owned for nearly 17 years was mistakenly sold in a yard sale for five bucks--a fraction of its $2,500 estimated value.

So up on the telephone poles went their unusual plea:

Reward: lost unicorn

The unicorn was the larger of a two-piece set. The 3-foot, 20-pound “baby” was displayed in the living room of the couple’s rented Mount Washington bungalow, along with Jean’s collection of angels and Chinese masks.

The larger piece was stored in the garage with Jean’s hiking shoes and a 4-foot, overstuffed bear dressed in a red conical wizard’s hat and a purple robe with gold lame stars.

It was the wizard that told Jean Means that something was wrong.

A couple days after Christmas she looked out her window and saw the colorful figure standing among items being offered by Lewis Smith, the brother of her deceased 85-year-old landlord and friend, Robert Smith. Smith had mistaken the possessions for those of his brother and put them out with his furniture and household items in an estate liquidation sale.

Jean Means, 52, an unemployed computer software specialist, rushed outside. No harm done, she was told. All that was sold was that old unicorn for five bucks.

“December was an awful month for us,” she said. “Someone keyed the car. The house was fumigated during the holiday and we both got sick. And this happening at Christmas--I cried.”

Ben Means, 39, a Web design student at Pasadena City College, posted fliers in the area the next day, placing them at eye level for passing drivers. The Meanses placed personal ads in newspapers pleading for the unicorn’s return.

They received only one response.

His name was Mark Hale of West Hollywood, and he had attended the yard sale looking for additions to his collection of 10,000 records. He called the Meanses to say that he didn’t know the unicorn buyer’s name but recognized her from other sales.

Her name was Ann Thompson, and she was an actress-writer from Los Feliz. She had bought the carving on impulse.

“Some objects have a good feeling about them,” she said. “This unicorn kind of gave me a good feeling--a positive feeling.”

She gave it as a gift to friends.

When Hale ran into her at a sale the weekend after the purchase, he told her that the people who owned the unicorn were desperate to get it back, and that it had been sold mistakenly.

Thompson and her friends were more than willing to return it. “It’s like a bad karma thing to keep something that was wrongfully obtained,” she said. “It started my New Year off right to be able to do something nice for some people.”

The Meanses gave Thompson a $50 reward. Thompson plans to use it to take her friends to dinner in lieu of the unicorn gift.

The Meanses are grateful to have their treasure back with them and their two dogs and four cats.

“It’s big and it’s beautiful and it got kind of damaged in the process,” Jean Means said. “But he’s home.”