Waynesville woman's camera found in Florida -- 7 years later
Apr. 30—It was spring 2014 and Waynesville residents Lori Stephens and her husband, Brian Gass, were in Crystal River, Florida, paddle boarding in King's Bay when her Olympus camera fell off her paddle board.
It was the couple's first time paddle boarding — something the two had always wanted to try while visiting Florida.
"And as soon as we got out there, we saw maybe eight to 10 manatees come around, and in my excitement I did not have the wrist strap attached to the little waterproof camera and it slipped in the water," Stephens said.
At first, she thought it would be easy to retrieve the camera, but the water was murky and she had to dig through the eel grass.
"I spent the next hour largely ignoring the manatees that I had come to see and searching the grass for my lost camera," she said. "I had no idea how many pictures were on it, but I knew it was a lot because we go a lot of places and I take lots of pictures. Obviously, after this amount of time we had given up hope of ever finding it."
Fast forward seven years.
An employee of the Plantation Adventure Center and Mantee Tours, Dustin Molina, discovered the Olympus camera in the sand. Though it was corroded from being submerged for years, the memory card was still intact. According to an April 22 article from baynews9.com, Molina and his co-workers started looking through the memory card for clues about the owner.
The memory card had 2,380 photos on it, mostly vacation photos from Mexico, in the mountains, on boats, in Ybor City and in Crystal River dating back to 2012.
The staff decided to post nine of the photos on social media in hopes of finding the owner. The post with the caption "Help us use the power of social media to help them get their memories back" went viral.
After thousands of Facebook shares and hundreds of comments, the post eventually made its way to Stephens. It took less than 48 hours.
"Someone on Facebook had clued into the fact that one of the people in the pictures had a Vine of the Mountains T-shirt on," said Stephens, who is a member of the Vine of the Mountains church in Waynesville.
From there, someone at Plantation Adventure Center got in touch with the church's pastor, Owen Fulghum, who contacted Stephens.
Stephens said she considers the event "nothing short of miraculous."
"I couldn't even believe it," Stephens said. "I honestly hadn't given it much thought after so many years. We pretty much had given up on it — it was a total surprise."
Since only a handful of the photos were posted, Stephens said she is not sure what all is on the memory card, but is really excited to get it back and reminisce in her memories that she thought were lost.
"It will be a treat for me to find out," she said.
Stephens said she was incredibly thankful and surprised that her lost camera had garnered so much interest.
"The main surprise of this whole story is the time and effort that the people at Plantation Adventure Center took to recover the SD card and get the info on it," Stephens said. "And then the response of so many people on Facebook."
Stephens is planning a trip back to Crystal River next month to be reunited with her camera, and to also celebrate her 60th birthday.
Stephens and her husband will be returning to Florida on May 6 as guests of the Plantation on Crystal River and the Plantation Adventure Center for a complimentary manatee tour so she can relive the experience of enjoying the magical creatures.
