A mystery four decades in the making -- and now leaders at a Brevard County middle school are running out of 'time' to solve it.

"Whatever happened to the time capsule we buried in 1976?" Dawn Spaccio tells us.

A question Dawn Spaccio and fellow Hoover Middle School alumni have been trying to answer for the past few years.

The tiny capsule, filled with a 8 mm camera, newspaper clippings and more school mementos from the mid-1970s was buried on the former junior high school property to commemorate the nation's bicentennial year.

At the helm of the project, social studies teacher Jack Deppner -- who planned on opening the time capsule in 1996 -- 20 years after it was put in the ground.

Problem was, it wasn't buried where he thought it was.

"He spent the remainder of his career not knowing where the capsule was," explains Spaccio.

Deppner passed away a couple years ago.

But the ongoing theory was the capsule was located near the old shop class and boy's locker room.

And Spaccio's quest has intensified with a Facebook page, hoping it will be found before the school's 50th anniversary celebration in November.

"I'd love to see thing from '76 myself. What we know is in there, and what we don't know is in there, are some pretty neat things," says Hoover Middle Assistant Principal Bill Machares.

There is one catch, school leaders need the school board's permission before they can dig on this site.

But once that's done, they hope to find the elusive piece of history -- and maybe even use it again for upcoming generations to find.

"But we will take pictures of where we buried it if we do that!" Machares jokes.

For Dawn, she would start digging now if she could.

"I've been waiting long enough!" she says.

Hoover Middle School plans a special event around their 50th anniversary if the time capsule is found.