She couldn’t believe her luck when she found that designer bag for just a measly $3. She was happy to have found such a bargain, and she took it home without a second thought.
What she didn’t know was that there was something inside the bag. Something that not even the people who sold it to her knew about and which would have major consequences.
The protagonist of this story is a woman named Sarah Thomas, from Portland, Oregon. She has a habit of wandering around second-hand and charity shops.
She enjoys searching for that hidden, undervalued item, that diamond in the rough that everyone else has overlooked. This time, she would find one of those; but she would also find out that there was more to it than it seemed.
There was a reason why Sarah enjoyed second-hand and charity shops so much: one of her side hustles was her own online retail business.
A great deal of what she sells there comes from her thrifty escapades. So this activity was as much of a hobby as a way to make money for Sarah. And in almost every place she inspected, she found a reward or two.
So it’s safe to say that Sarah had an eye for detail. She was used to inspecting through the rows of second-hand clothes in search of valuable or rare items that their owners had given away.
But sometimes, small but significant details can go unnoticed by even the most trained eyes, even Sarah’s. But when she first saw it, her only thoughts were that she had just found a big-time bargain.
It took place at a Goodwill store. Sarah didn’t want to leave empty-handed, but she wasn’t expecting to find anything out of the ordinary either.
For some reason, from all the bargains she had ever come across in her lifetime, almost none had been found at a Goodwill store. But then, suddenly, she saw it right in front of her.
The item in question was a designer bag. It was quite a fancy object compared to the rest of the stuff there was in the store. Sarah checked its price tag.
It was only $3! When it was new, that bag was probably worth about $300. So she didn’t think twice: she grabbed the bag, walked towards the nearest cashier, and handed her the $3. And shortly after she left the store, she noticed that something was off.
The bag seemed to be heavier than it should. Maybe someone had left something inside? She checked the interior, but she didn’t see anything. It seemed completely empty.
She wondered what it could be making the bag so heavy when she noticed something: there was a hole in the lining that she hadn’t checked. Could there be something there?
She slid her fingers inside the hole and bingo! She touched something that felt metallic. Now she had to try and get it out of the hole without ripping the bag.
It took her a while, but eventually, she managed to get a grab of the mysterious object. And when she had it in front of her eyes, she was even more puzzled.
It was a digital camera. It seemed pretty outdated, like something straight from the 2000s. She wondered if it belonged to the original owner of the bag.
She thought about checking if it had some saved photos. Would that be too invasive of someone else’s privacy? But she couldn’t resist the curiosity. And that’s where her journey started.
There were some pictures of a mother and a little kid stored in the camera. Who was that woman? Was she the one who had sold the bag? She tried to check the picture’s details in search of any piece of information.
But she couldn’t find anything. The camera and the pictures were a mystery waiting to be solved. She decided that she had to find that woman.
But there was still one issue: how would she even find her? She didn’t expect any helpful information going back to the Goodwill store: those shops get hundreds of items each day, and they don’t track the people they get them from.
Sarah spent some time racking her brains, trying to come up with a solution. And eventually, she found it: now she knew what to do.
Sarah doubted for a bit, but she felt like it was her duty to find the woman in the pictures and give her the camera back. After all, those pictures may have some sentimental value to her.
So she wrote a post on Facebook telling the story of her discovery. She also attached some of the pictures in the camera and asked anyone who read it and knew that woman to please get in touch. After that, all there was left to do was sit back and wait.
Shortly after, her Facebook post went viral. It was getting liked and shared by thousands of people. And finally, someone reached out with some information.
It was someone who claimed to know that woman. Apparently, her name was Katie Connor. Those pictures had to be from a long time ago, as her son was now a teenager. Sarah got the contact information for Katie, messaged her, and waited for a response.
And soon enough, she got a reply from Katie Connor. She told her that she didn’t even remember that she ever had that camera, but she would be really happy to have it back.
So the two women arranged to meet at the parking lot of a Target. Sarah drove over there, and as she parked her car, she noticed that Katie was already waiting for her.
Katie couldn’t even believe that she would ever see that camera again. The photos were taken more than a decade ago, and she didn’t even remember them.
When this story went public, many people had a hard time believing how Sarah went that far and took all that effort just to return a stranger’s old camera. What do you think? Would you have done the same?
