The great camera saga: Woman reunited with device 13 years after losing it in river with photos intact

Over 13 summers ago, Coral Amayi lost her digital camera while rafting in a river in the western US state of Colorado. Little did she know that a good samaritan in 2023 would not only find her camera but also return it - with the photo memories still intact.

Spencer Greiner, a local hobby fisherman embarked on a fishing trip on March 14 in the Animas River. While walking around, Greiner stumbled upon the camera -rusted and looking beyond any salvation.

However, he picked up the camera anyway and decided to give it at least one try before discarding it away.

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"I was walking along and saw it sticking out of the sand. It was in rough shape, so I really didn't have any hopes of getting anything off of it, I was just planning to throw it away, and then curiosity got the best of me, and I had to see what was on it,"Greiner was quoted as saying by local media reports.

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Greiner took the gamble and fetched the memory card from the camera which still had water coming out of it. He plugged the memory card into the computer and to everyone's surprise, found the photos still intact as the computer managed to read the SD card just fine.

"I was like, Yeah, this is probably not going to work at all. But I plugged it into the computer, and it read immediately and I was like, Oh cool, let's see what sort of treasures we're going to find on this memory card."

Greiner stated that he recovered photos of atubing trip, a wedding, and a bachelorette party on the card. Intrigued that it could be the memories of a person, he posted the photosin a Colorado Facebook group on March 15.

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Within an hour of posting the photos, Greiner was contacted by the groom from the wedding who commented under the post. A few days laterGreiner and Amayi got in touch with the former handing the SD card and camera. When quizzed how he felt after returning the precious, sentimental piece of item, a humble Greiner said he did something that anybody else would have done in his place.

"I don’t feel that what I did was anything anyone else wouldn’t have done.I knew those pictures were sentimental to someone. Taking five minutes to make a Facebook post was the least I could do. It turns out that was all that was needed."

(With inputs from agencies)

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