Thief Returns Stolen 9/11 Flag

I am so sorry. I had no idea. 

Those were the words written on a note that accompanied a neatly folded American flag that was left on a Huntington Station doorstep sometime overnight Thursday. 

The flag, which flew over Ground Zero following 9/11, had been stolen from a flagpole at the home of Melissa Ielpi-Brengel earlier this week. 

Ielpi-Brengel's brother Jonathan Ielpi, a firefighter with FDNY Squad 288 in Queens, died on 9/11, and the flag was one of many given to 9/11 families to fly outside their homes between Memorial Day and July 4, and again on Sept. 11. 

"The flag means so much to me and my family and we are so happy and grateful that it was returned and we are able to display it again, although this time it will be put in a proper case and displayed in the house," Ielpi-Brengel wrote on Facebook. 

Ielpi-Brengel had said she spread the word on the flag theft in the hopes that its special meaning would get back to the thief, which clearly it did. 

"I hope the person or people who took it learned some type of lesson through all of this and that they don't try to pull something like this again," Ielpi-Brengel told Patch on Friday.