Monday, March 29, 2010

prodigal stun

What once was lost has now been found! Four months after I lost my digital camera, it has found its way back to me.

On the day after Thanksgiving, my kids and I purchased a new washer and dryer as a Christmas gift for my wife. They posed for pictures with the floor models of the appliances. Our plan was to give my wife the photos on Christmas day, since the machines wouldn't be delivered until the next day. That never happened because I lost the camera somewhere at the mall, probably in the parking lot.

This past week, I received the following message from a college student named Alayna. She used Facebook to look me up.
Over the Christmas holidays I found an Olympus camera in the West Town Mall parking lot. Once going through the pictures to try to find out whose it might be, I found there were many pictures of you and Alan Williams from channel 8 on it. If it is yours or you think you might know whose it is, please reply.
The photo of Alan Williams that Alayna saw was from the Signature Chefs Auction on November 8. She didn't mention the picture of Kristin Farley that was next on the memory card.



Obviously, I wrote back to Alayna and added her as a friend. Her busy schedule made it hard to arrange a meeting. However her parents lived reasonably close to the location of a remote broadcast I had on Friday afternoon. They arrived with the camera and told me the rest of the story. Surprisingly, I have "Fish Bait" to thank.

Like mine, their family went to the mall on Black Friday. Alayna saw my camera in the parking lot and picked it up. It must have wanted to be lost, because it promptly disappeared somewhere in her car. She was cleaning the vehicle recently and found the camera again. Fortunately, it still had enough battery life left for Alayna and her father to look at the photos and do some research.
As far as the detective work, I have to give the credit for actually figuring out that it was yours to him. I had looked through the pictures a few times to see if maybe I could figure it out from that. I recognized Allan Williams but with my busy schedule didn't have time to really figure out how to get in contact with him. Then last weekend, I was at home and up late working on a school project. My dad got hungry and we started talking about the camera. He started going through it again and found the picture of the film you were in, noticed you in it, Googled the film and found your picture. Then I just Facebooked you to see if it was you and as they say, the rest is history. Ha-ha! I wonder if it wasn't for the movie, if we would have ever figured it out. Glad you got it back. :)
Alayna's dad said it was these two pictures from the "Fish Bait" premiere that gave him the clues he needed. Now I have to figure out how to return the $27 in donations that I received for a replacement camera.

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2 Comments:

Blogger overtly trite said...

cool that your camera has been returned! I'd bet you could donate the funds you received for a replacement to Children's Hospital...

3/29/2010  
Blogger Professor Falken said...

Frank, you should borrow this guy's method for getting your camera returned next time. How to get your lost camera returned

3/29/2010  

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