This photo from Joyce’s camera was taken during a trip to Alaska. It was posted to Reddit, and hours later a user recognized her, helping to get her camera back in the right hands. Photo: Joyce
The internet is awash with stories like these – person loses GoPro and social media good Samaritans track the person down using photos and video and return the camera to the owner. It’s a testament to how well built the little cameras are, and how in spite of what the onslaught of negativity in the news, there are a few good apples out there.
The latest in lost and found GoPro news comes from Canada. Surfer Sarah Joyce lost her camera while learning to surf at Florencia Bay Beach, south of Tofino in British Columbia. It was a total bummer.
A Facebook post was her last ditch effort to see if anyone had retreived it. When that proved unsuccessful, she didn’t think she’d ever see it again.
“I had said my goodbyes to it,” Joyce told the Toronto Star. “The odds were one million to one. I kind of just gave up on it, I said there’s no way I’m going to find this.”
Some time later, Calgary resident Brian Hwang, who was traveling with his wife and kids, spotted the camera tumbling in the surf while he was running on the sand.
“I saw the GoPro mounted on a stick in the water,” he said. “(It was) under about a foot of water … near the shore, kind of rolling back and forth with the waves and I retrieved it.” It was “jammed up with salt and sand.”
Without a computer, Hwang didn’t touch the camera until a few days later when he returned home, and luckily it still worked.
Hwang decided to post a photo from the camera to Reddit to see if anyone recognized the owner. Just hours later, Reddit user vanilla_butthole came to the rescue.
Jenn Ralph, known online as vanilla_butthole, had worked with Joyce at a sporting goods store in Ottawa before she moved away and recognized her immediately.
“I bet someone would have recognized her, I just happened to be the first one,” she said. “I was excited to let her know because I know how expensive (GoPros) are and that it sucks to lose memories like that.”
When Ralph told Joyce the camera had been found, she started crying, she said.
As for Brian Hwang who found the camera, he was surprised the situation was resolved so quickly.
“I did not anticipate the situation getting resolved as fast as it did. The internet really has made the phrase “it’s a small world” come true in that sense,” Hwang said.
