Craig Murray
The 1952 Helsinki Olympic Gold Medal and 1954 Commonwealth Games Gold Medal of South African swimming icon Joan Breetzke (Harrison) have been recovered.
Her family had made a desperate attempt to have the medals returned to them after they were stolen during a house robbery in the Selborne area of East London on Friday the 30th of December.
The medals were taken, along with several other items, when burglars ransacked the Selborne home of her grandson Craig Murray, and broke into a safe in which the medals were kept.
Murray told AlgoaFM News that both medals were found late on Tuesday in neighbouring Southernwood by a local garden service run by Justin Ainslie.
"Justin explained that his workers were cutting grass in the Southernwood area of East London when they found the medals about 5 minutes apart from each other lying in the gutter and handed them into him," said Murray.
He said Ainslie was initially unsure what the medals were all about but that a friend of his Charl Townsend advised him that there was an ongoing search for the missing Joan Harrison medals.
Murray said Ainslie reached out to him and they met up at his home in Gonubie.
"You know, they were such good people there and almost as excited as us that the medals had been recovered. They were also so excited for my gran and we'll certainly be sorting out the reward that we were offering with Justin in the coming days."
Murray said Joan immediately knew that something was up when the entire family converged on her doorstep in Cintsa East on Tuesday evening.
"Its unusual for us all to arrive at her house so late in the day and when we showed her the recovered medals she was just in total disbelief and absolutely thrilled at their recovery - she couldn't stop smiling."
Murray said they would be looking at a few options as to where the medals should be kept in the future as a safe at home was clearly not necessarily the best option.
