A production manager at WCCO-TV made the find of the year – or century – while looking through 50-year-old footage about a teachers’ strike.

Matt Liddy was reviewing old film footage of a reporter interviewing children supporting picketing teachers saw a familiar face: what appeared to him to be none other than an 11-year old Prince Rogers Nelson.

Other WCCO personnel agreed that the child being interviewed looked like Prince, but as he never stated his name on camera, they couldn’t be sure unless they got independent verification. Anchor Jeff Wagner had the WCCO team restore the footage so they could hear the audio, then tracked down another student who did provide his name to the interviewer.

Staffers also compared the footage with a school photo of Prince in fifth grade; that picture showed a marked resemblance to the boy in the footage. After that, the team heads to the home of professional historian and archeologist Kristen Zschomler, who is also a fan of the music icon.

After stating that videos of pre-teen Prince are “almost nonexistent,” she joyfully watches the clip. “I think that’s him, definitely. Oh my gosh. Yeah, I think that’s definitely Prince,” Zschomler said. “This definitely looks like Lincoln Junior High School where he would have been attending school in April of 1970.”

Terrance Jackson, Prince’s former neighbor and bandmate also took a look at the video.

“We go far back as kindergarten at John Hay Elementary in north Minneapolis,” he said, as he scanned the footage.

“That is Prince! Standing right there with the hat on, right? That’s Skipper! Oh my God!” Prince was known as “Skipper from the North Side” to his friends.

In the WCCO interview, Jackson was giddy with laughter, then tearful. “I am like blown away. I’m totally blown away,” he said, confirming that this was indeed, footage of Prince.

Prince, who died in 2016 at the age of 57, was a seven-time Grammy winner with massive hits like “Purple Rain” and “When Doves Cry.” Despite his fame, he never strayed from the Twin Cities area, creating a compound, Paisley Park, that served as home and studio in Minnesota.