California fruit stand employees find wallet belonging to William Shatner

GILROY, Calif. — Even space travelers lose their wallets.

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William Shatner, who played Capt. James Kirk on on the 1960s television series “Star Trek” and became the oldest person to travel into space in 2021, accidentally left his wallet at a northern California fruit stand earlier this month, KGO-TV reported.

Shatner, 91, was at Gary Tognetti’s fruit stand in Gilroy, the television station reported.

Tognetti, 50, who owns B& T Farms, was not at the stand when the actor showed up. His 15-year-old daughter sold an older man four bags of cold cherries and $2 worth of corn, KGO reported. The man drove away but left his wallet in a corn bin, the news outlet reported.

The next day, Sophia Tognetti showed her father the wallet.

“You’ve got to be kidding me,” Gary Tognetti told The Washington Post when he realized who owned the wallet.

“She had no clue who he was,” Tognetti told “Today.”

Tognetti found a driver’s license, a COVID-19 vaccine card, along with a credit card, an ATM and a CVS card -- all with Shatner’s name on them, according to the news outlet.

Tognetti texted his friend, Gilroy Police Department Officer Mark Tarasco, KGO reported.

“I told him, ‘Hey, we found this wallet,’ and he wasn’t quite sure if I was telling a little joke,” Tognetti said.

“I went and immediately phone called to Gary to try to figure out why Gary, of all people, has Mr. Shatner’s wallet in his possession,” Tarasco told the television station.

Tognetti, 50, is a fourth-generation farmer who grew up in Gilroy, a city located about an hour south of San Francisco, the Post reported. He grows corn, cherries, lettuce, tomatoes and peppers on his 3,500-acre farm, according to the newspaper. He grew up working at produce stands.

It was a rare brush with a celebrity for Tognetti.

“At my parents’ fruit stand, (San Francisco 49ers quarterback) Joe Montana stopped by, and we got his autograph there when I was pretty young,” Tognetti told the Post.

Tognetti also reached out to a friend at the Santa Clara County Sheriff’s Office. Tarasco told KGO that there was a friendly competition between the officers to see who would contact Shatner first.

“It was a race to try to figure out who was gonna contact Mr. Shatner first,” Tarasco told the television station. “If you were to call Beverly Hills PD, they would tell you that there was a few different people calling, trying to get a hold of Mr. Shatner in Beverly Hills.”

Tarasco contacted the Beverly Hills Police Department and was eventually connected to Shatner’s agent. It took two hours to return the wallet.

“They actually FedEx-ed it that Thursday, and he had it by Friday,” Tognetti told KGO.

On Tuesday, Shatner thanked Tognetti and his wife on Twitter.

“I would like to thank Gary and Natalie of B&T Farms @TfarmsB for their extreme honesty in returning my lost wallet,” Shatner posted on his verified Twitter account. “They are obviously good citizens. I would also like to thank Officer Mark Tarasco and Sergeant John Ballard from the @GilroyPD My best, Bill.”

The family-owned farm quickly answered the actor’s tweet with their own post on Twitter: “It was our pleasure Mr. Shatner. I grew up watching Star Trek with my dad. B and T Farms and GILROY Law Enforcement are friendly inhabitants of the Federation so hold up on hitting them with phasers. Live long and prosper sir Shatner! Give us a holler the next time you stop by!”

Tognetti told the Post that he wants to put a sign up outside of his stand that says, “William Shatner was here.”

It would be a great marketing tool for the fruit stand to “live long and prosper.”

“I’m waiting for people to start popping in and say, ‘Hey, is this where William shopped?’” Tognetti told the newspaper.

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