Once upon a time, a popular hobby was collecting stamps. Well, people today have gone way beyond that, and there people who collect in-flight sick bags, coupons, or bugs, among others.
Emma Smreker, a teacher of French from Oklahoma City, has been searching for mementos in old, used books, then she tries to find their owners and return them.
What is now a proper mission for Emma started a few years back, when her husband gave her a French book, in which she found an old receipt from a cafe in Montreal.
“That receipt kind of immediately transported me there, and I started to think about who this person was who had this book before me, what were they doing, when did they go to this cafe, what their day was like. Then this idea just kind of started to form,” Smreker told CNN.
Posted by Emma Smreker Davis on Sunday, February 17, 2019
That’s when she started thinking about all the memories that an old book can enclose from previous owners, and she decided to reunite those owners with the memories.
One of the most recent stories was that of a photo booth strip that took her about a year to return to its owners.
Last year, Emma was browsing through a second-hand book, when she noticed something like a bookmark in it. But it wasn’t really a bookmark. It was a photo booth strip picturing probably a father and daughter making silly faces for the camera.
“I immediately zoomed in on their faces,” she said. “It broke my heart to think that this memory was lost and they didn’t have it anymore.”
That was it. At that moment she knew she had to do whatever it took to find those people and return the photos.
“It just became my mission from that point on to see if I could reunite them with this photograph.”
Indeed, she immediately started working on it. To begin with, she posted the photo on social media, but she didn’t get any answer.
Then, she used a clue she noticed in the photo.
“The logo [on dad’s shirt] was actually a golf course in California, and I thought ‘Hey, golfers, you might recognize him.'”
But no lack still.
Eventually, a local news channel published the story on the news, and that’s when the family realized that someone had been looking for them.
“I happened to be watching the news late at night,” Maria Meagher, wife of the man in the photo and mom to the little girl, said, “and[…] there was a picture of Tom and Sofia.”
Tom, Maria’s husband, and Sofia, their daughter, had taken the pictures back in 2007, when the family visited an amusement park.
For the family this was a “crazy surprise”, and they decided to reach out to the woman who had their picture.
Maria messaged Emma on Instagram, and the young teacher was incredibly happy that her mission was accomplished.
Emma soon mailed the photo to the family and Tom and Sofia recreated the pictures and sent them to her. This made Emma feel that she really contributes to people’s happiness in a way.
Emma eventually met the family, and they all had a good time chatting and taking silly pictures together.
Watch Emma and the Meaghers talking about the story in the video below.
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