Abby Zuniga realized after she gave her coat to another woman outside The Vixen in McHenry on New Year’s Eve 2024 that she might need the coat back.

“Technically, I didn’t lose it,” Zuniga said of the coat that actually belonged to her then-boyfriend and now husband, Brian Butler.

After making a few attempts to track down the Carhartt coat since that night, Zuniga posted her plea to the Everything McHenry Facebook group on Feb. 6.

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Kelsey Koehl was scrolling through her Facebook feed Friday morning when she saw a post that seemed familiar.

“I was reading the whole story and thought ‘I think I have this coat in my closet,’” the Spring Grove woman said.

The two met up on Saturday, and now Butler has his coat back.

The story, both women said, is a testament to the internet’s power to connect people – and how women will watch out for each other.

Zuniga recalls what happened that night, when she passed the coat to Koehl.

There was a fight outside the venue, police were on the scene and she saw a small brunette woman standing off to one side outdoors, shivering without a coat.

“As a girl does on New Year’s Eve, we don’t bring coats, and she was shivering like a leaf,” Zuniga said.

She hadn’t brought a coat with either – which is why she was wearing Butler’s.

“It was one of my favorite coats,” Butler added – he’d gotten it in 2014, when he was 16.

Butler also knew that “every clothing item of his is mine now too,” Zuniga said. “But I don’t think he expected me to give it away.”

He loved that coat, Butler said, but he was also touched by Zuniga’s empathy.

“She saw somebody in need,” he said. At the end of the day “it didn’t bother me that much, and it is nice to have it back.”

Koehl said she hoped she’d run into, and recognize, Zuniga at a future event at The Vixen to get the coat back to her – but hadn’t thought of posting on social media either.

“I held onto it ... and hoped I would find a post” that she was looking for it, Koehl said.

Once the two connected online, Zuniga realized that since she and Butler moved from Wonder Lake to Spring Grove last fall, Koehl’s house is about five minutes away.

“I have passed her house every day, without knowing it,” Zuniga said.

It was not the first time she tried to find the jacket. In the early-morning hours of Jan. 1, 2025, she made a TikTok video asking to get it back. Koehl is also on the video-sharing app, but never saw her plea.

“It is very odd that it came across my Facebook,” she said.