Colorado Mesa University President Tim Foster received a diploma in the mail on Jan. 9, mailed back as undeliverable, dated July 29, 1987.

Sometimes, things get lost in the mail. Most of the time, it’s an issue that’s corrected quickly, but that wasn’t the case for Sean Harris, 56.

Harris finally received his diploma from CMU in Jan. 2019, 32 years after he first walked across the stage and moved his tassel across his graduate cap. In 1987, he received an empty frame, as the school would later mail the diploma to him.

However, the frame was never filled. His diploma was supposed to be mailed to him at his home address in Rawlins, Wyoming, but instead it was lost.

Harris was surprised when the diploma turned up, handed to him at his California home by counselor Mia Nissen. He had always just assumed that he had the diploma tucked away somewhere, sitting in a dusty closet.

According to the Daily Sentinel, Harris moved to Wyoming, to California and to New York, before settling in California again after leaving CMU.
Now running a business called “Maverick Sean Photography,” his graduation certificate was an afterthought, never asked about by employers or family. He thought the situation was funny, though.

“I think that it goes to show just how tight-knit of a community Grand Junction is,” Nissen said.

Normally, if the graduate doesn’t claim their diploma, their family steps in and receives it for them, according to Vice President of Student Services John Marshall. However, that never happened since no one realized it was lost.

Marshall remarked that this was the first instance of this ever happening at CMU. In addition to receiving his original diploma, Harris also received a brand new one, along with copies of his transcripts and a lifetime pass to theatre productions at CMU from President Foster.