A Digital Message In A Bottle: Lost Camera Found Six Years Later, 6,000 Miles From Home

Think back to 2007. What were you doing? What were you taking pictures of? Chances are, some of those photos are preserved on Facebook. But what if you never even got the chance to upload them?

In 2007, Lindsay Scallan was vacationing in Hawaii. She was diving in Maui when she lost her waterproof camera. She was bummed about it, but her photographs were lost in the ocean, and that was that. Or was it? Fast forward to 2013, when Douglas Cheng, employee of China Airlines, found the camera along the coast of Taiwan. Yes, the coast of Taiwan. Lindsay’s camera traveled all the way from Maui to Taiwan with its memory card still in tact. Douglas Cheng got in contact with her, and it’s being returned to her! After all this time! Can you imagine waiting this long for vacation pics?

Remember when your parents warned you not to take the camera on that ski trip, because they said you’d lose it, but you didn’t listen to them? But then you lost the memory card and had to spend all of your vacation money to replace it and never told them about it until now (sorry, dad)? Yeah. I’m not saying that happened to me in 2006, but if it did, this story gives me hope that my lost memory card is due to turn up any day now from Beaver Creek.

Back to Lindsay’s story. Mr. Cheng wiped the barnacles off the camera he found and went to work finding its owner. He posted its pictures on a Facebook page, said “China Airlines is looking for you,” and well, you know the rest: China Airlines found her.

Lindsay can’t make the trip to Taiwan to reunite with her camera until June, but at least she’s seen all the photos from her first Hawaii trip now. I can’t even wait six seconds to see what a picture I just took looks like, so props for her waiting six years.

Altogether now: man. The power of technology.

Featured image via Sky News