Alexia Small and her kids went to Rome, Italy in 2005, but she lost the camera with the photos from the vacation soon after and never thought she’d see them again. She was riding her motorcycle to her parents house in Virginia to show them the photos when the camera fell out of her bag. That was 16 years ago, but she just got those long lost pictures back thanks to the kindness of a stranger and social media.
Just after that camera fell to the ground in 2005, Leanne Littman was driving down the same road, spotted it and picked it up. She didn’t recognize anyone in the photos and everyone wasn’t using Facebook back then, so she couldn’t share them online. She threw away the camera because it was heavily damaged and kept the SD card in a drawer, forgetting about it until she had time during the pandemic to investigate. Littman found a card reader a few weeks ago and posted the photos to Facebook, explaining where they were found and hoping someone would know the family in them.
It only took a few hours before she was connecting with Small. Now the family has their memories back and the women have become friends. Small says the whole experience is a little surreal and she hopes it’ll make us more aware of what we can do. “If you find something, get it back to the person,” she says. “You don’t know how much joy it can bring.”
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Photo: Getty Images