I don't know if your story is true and if you lost coins for real, but many bitcoiners from the early days lost the keys to their coins because BTC was not worth anything in the early days and they did not bother about securing their coins or taking security seriously. These days people are more careful with how they handle their coins and security is now the first thing most bitcoiners aim to achieve once they buy BTC. There is even a similar story of a man who threw away his hard drive containing 7,500 BTC's in 2013, his name is James Howells, he has been going 'crazy' in recent years on how to recover it because BTC is now so valuable, but back in 2013 it wasn't and so he carelessly lost it.