THE TALE OF THE TRAVELING NIKON
Once upon a time a lady found a digital camera on a downtown park
bench. She happened to work in my office and since she knew nothing
about cameras asked me if it was any good or worth keeping. Sadly, it
was a Nikon Coolpix 4100, a 4MP piece of junk hardly worth saving. The
lady was very sad when I told her this as the thought of scoring some
bucks on EBAY had already crossed her mind.
As for myself, I was more interested in the pics on the camera and who
they might belong to. So I took the camera home, downloaded the pics
from the cheapo SD card inside and looked at them. The card contained
family photos and from the pics it was obvious that it belonged to a
little girl. There was no owner ID embedded in the EXIF info but the
photos on the card told a story about where the family had been.
Obviously, they were just passing through town on vacation. Some of
the pics were taken at the hotel across the street from my office so I
knew they had stayed there. There were pics taken from the back seat of
the minivan of the Nashville skyline and the big bridge that you cross
going from Tennessee into Kentucky. So the destination was up Illinois
/ Indiana way.
Also, some of the pics were of an elderly couple who lived in a nice
little house .... somewhere. All I could glean from that was the
street address .... "330" .. on the front of the house. But who
knows what street, what town, or even what state?
The elderly man looked to be in pretty bad shape. I noticed a walker
beside the chair where he sat as well as a cap saying "FBI" on it.
There were some photos of the traveling family that owned the cammy,
which I printed. On some of the pics the Dad was wearing a hat that
said "Indiana University" so maybe they were visiting Indiana?
I took the pics I'd printed to the hotel the next day and the desk
clerk told me she recognized the family who had checked out the
previous day. She recalled the little girl crying at the loss of her
camera. I told her that the photographic evidence on the photos showed
that the little girl attended a school in NE Atlanta (one of the pics
was of her wearing a school shirt). The desk clerk could offer no more
clues saying, "Almost all of the people who checked out yesterday are
from Georgia." Thanks for nothin, lady.
The camera sat on my office table for almost a month before I decided
to really make an effort to locate the owners (hey, I've been busy!).
So the other night I started reviewing the pics once again, making
notes as I went. A few of the pics were of the little girl's brother
playing baseball. His cap said "All-Stars" so I knew he must've
been good. Also, the letters "NYO" were on his cap and a quick web
search of the Atlanta area showed that "NYO" stood for Northwest
Youth Organization. Fortunately, that athletic association has a very
nice website with lots of team pics. I looked through most of them
before recognizing what looked to be the kid in the camera photos.
Fate must've been smiling on me because his name wasn't Smith,
Jones, or Johnson. No, his last name had 14 letters in it, narrowing
down considerably my future web searches. When I typed his last name
into whitepages.com it only returned two hits in Atlanta, both of them
at the same address. Good old Mom and Dad, no doubt.
Cross-referencing, I typed his last name into the same site, this time
using Indiana as the state and got exactly one hit ..... on 330 E. 5th
St. That's right .... "330."
BINGO!
I called the two numbers listed and left messages on the recordings. I
also sent an e-mail to the one e-mail address I could track down. A
couple of days passed with no response. I left a few more messages, but
still nothing.
Finally, this morning I received an e-mail from the Mom saying that her
daughter did indeed lose her digital camera and was distraught over it.
And the reason it took so long to get back to me was that the family
had gone back to Indiana. The sick elderly gentleman had passed away.
The photos on the camera were the last pics they had of grandpa. So I
called the lady and the little girl answers and says, "Is this about
the camera?" I said, "Yes, I have it." The girl says, "I just
have one question .... Are the photos still on the camera?"
I said, "Hell no, kid I deleted all that crap!"
JUST KIDDING!
I told her that her pics were safe and then I talked to the little
girl's mom and told her the whole story of how I tracked them down
(omitting the part about me being a stalker, of course). She told me
of her late father-in-law who had just passed and said he would have
been proud of me. It seems he spent his life working for the FBI. The
little girl wanted to know if I was an angel. I chose not to answer
that one.
After talking to them on the phone I e-mailed the mom about how the
lady who found the camera would probably appreciate a phone call of
thanks. I gave them her number in our office and waited for the call.
About 30 minutes later the phone rang, and the lady who found the phone
answers and hears the little girl thank her. Then the mom gets on the
phone and thanks her and tells her what it meant to their family to get
the camera and their precious photos back. When the lady in my office
hung up, she was bawling all over the place. "Tears of joy," she
called them.
At lunchtime I went to the UPS store and mailed the camera back home.
The little girl will have her camera and her pics tomorrow.
Now I ask you, "WHO RULES???"
-Annika ----> loves happy endings
Annika1980
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