The Balch Springs Police Department is on a mission to reunite a North Texas teen with her special dress.
"This is a first for us," said Pedro Gonzalez, spokesman for the Balch Springs Police Department.
A police officer was driving along the 12500 block of Elam Road near the police station early on Saturday morning when he noticed a big bag lying in the middle of the street.
"He sees a plastic bag and he thought it was trash," Gonzalez said. "When he realized that the dress was inside the plastic bag he was like 'Umm, this is a little bit more important.'"
It appears to be a quinceañera dress, belonging to a 15-year-old girl in the area about to celebrate her quince.
This is a predominately Hispanic celebration of a girl being introduced into society as a young woman.
"In all my years I've never seen a quinceañera dress being lost," Gonzalez said.
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The dress appears to have already been worn.
Police are not showing the entire dress to the public to ensure that the person who comes by the station to claim the gown can describe it in detail.
"Our officers work several quinceañeras in our city and we know how important this dress is," Gonzalez said. "It's almost right next to their wedding dress and we want to make sure they don't lose that special item."
These dresses often cost several hundred dollars.
"Something like this is $1,200 to $1,500," said Raul Rodriguez Lizcano pointing to a dress inside his bridal shop in Oak Cliff.
"The dress is pretty much a special thing. It's a very expensive, probably most expensive item in every quinceañera," he said.
Evelyn Sixtos was at Lizcano Bridal trying on her dress on Monday afternoon.
"We saw this particular color and I've never seen this red before in a dress so I was like 'this is the perfect dress,'" she said. "I'm going to keep it for life. I'm probably going to turn 35 and put it on again."
The teen said her heart aches for the girl who lost her dress.
"My heart would break," she said. "You take so much time looking through so many dresses and then you come across this perfect dress and just like lose it. That would break my heart."
