Where is the family that belongs to these irreplaceable videos? That is what Sgt. First Class Joe Lynch wanted to know after he explored his $5.00 Goodwill bargain and found some priceless tapes tucked inside of a case pocket.
Donation For Charity
Lynch explained why he bought the turn-of-the-millennium RCA video camera at the Clarksville, Ind. store,
“I take a lot of footage of my kids, but my wife she keeps on insisting insists I take a lot more.”
But when he looked at the tapes, he found a mystery family’s most precious memories. They included a toddler meeting his newborn brother for the first time. Then seven months later little brother was crawling into the screen. Come Halloween, the whole family was carving pumpkins. Lynch continued,
“I guess my mission is to find out who these tapes belong to so I can get them back to them.”
Mission To Find Family
Lynch took snapshots of the family and placed them on Facebook in hopes of discovering the missing family’s identity. There were some clues. For example, the digital tapes show the name of the Oklahoma hospital where the infant was born.
“Somebody might know who these people are, so they can contact me, so I can mail the tapes back. That’s what I really want to do.”
Lost Family Found
And finally, Lynch’s efforts paid off. It turns out that Kit Applegate’s brother-in-law gave him the camera with the tapes still tucked away in the the case. Applegate never noticed the tapes and later donated the item to Goodwill. He said,
“My brother-in-law gave me that camera several years ago. It’s his family in those videos. He didn’t know the tapes were inside the case. And I didn’t either until we saw the WAVE 3 News story. We feel bad for not ever looking in the bag.”
Applegate said his brother-in-law met Lynch to thank him,
“That is so awesome that this guy would go out of his way to try to find out who these people were. Most of the time the news is just full of bad stuff. So, just to see someone who wants to do some good and also see that the news took hold of it, and wanted to do something good too, just makes me feel grateful.”
I feel better – don’t you? Get out the popcorn. Let’s watch the lost family’s video here:
This man is on the hunt for the original owner of the camera. See what he found on the tape:
Posted by KALB News Channel 5 on Thursday, August 14, 2014
