I HAVE to share with you what happened to me today!! It was a miracle!! On Good Friday, no less! The story actually begins a couple of years ago. I went thrifting. I’m always looking for props, especially vintage ones for my day job over at dk photographic. I flew into the Goodwill near my home and while I didn’t find any props, I did find a really cool box for slide storage. I was re-doing my shelves in a black/gold theme AND was working on scanning my family’s old slides & photos so I snatched up this beautiful box.
(Pardon the iphone photo) When I got home, I found that the box wasn’t empty. It turned out there were two trays. The visible one was empty. The hidden tray was quite full.
I love family photos. And they don’t have to be of my family. I love that moments get captured and kept forever so you can bet I looked at every one of those slides. I loved seeing the photos of our local high school homecoming. I was sure someone had accidentally donated their precious memories and I knew I couldn’t just get rid of them. I held onto them. I called our school district to see if they could help me but as fascinated as the person on the other end of the phone was, I never got a return phone call. I made a few other calls but nothing panned out. I put this beautiful box on my shelf. It sat there until today.
For whatever reason, this afternoon I realized that the internet might be able to help me solve the mystery of who this family is and help me reunite the photos with their rightful owners. I scanned a few dozen of the photos and created a facebook post. And that’s where things get crazy—like this world is REALLY small kind of crazy. I have this gorgeous, funny, smart awesome friend named Stacey who I adore and who (wisely) is not addicted to social media. She moved from our little town of Dublin to Southern California a few years ago. Of all days to decide to see what’s going on in Facebook world, she chose today. I wasn’t on her news feed. She saw that I liked a mutual friend’s photo and clicked on my name to see what I’ve been up to. She saw this post about the mystery family—a mere fourteen minutes after I posted it. People… SHE KNEW WHO IT WAS!!! I had goosebumps on my goosebumps!
Can you believe it?!! I mean. Really… What are the odds that the mystery family and I have a mutual friend? She went to middle school with one of the young men in the photos. His name is Tom. She called me and we conspired about how to let this family know we have these photos. She found Tom on facebook. She tagged friends who knew him. I tagged him in the post and I sent him a message on LinkedIn with my phone number. Within another 20 minutes, he knew about the photos and we were talking on the phone.
He was as blown away as we were. Turns out, he moved from Dublin to California, too. He only lives a short distance from where Stacey does now!!! His parents had downsized from their family home and as we all know, downsizing means donating… to Goodwill… for me to find… and after 3.5 years…. to give back to them. His parents are less than 3 miles from my home. I am meeting them in a few days to return their slides to them.
This is just a handful of the nearly 300 slides contained in that tray. I love the stories: family get togethers, school functions, the sports, the love… Honestly, it just really makes a heart happy. Apparently, a lot of people agree. Our local news channel heard the story and shared it on their website. How wonderful to see good news being shared.
See the story HERE.
I hope this made your heart as happy as it did mine. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. Happy Easter!
xoxo
Donna
