There are few moments in life more uplifting than when we’re reunited with something or someone we thought we had lost a long time ago.
And it’s something that a lot of us have experienced because the world has a way of dropping that kind of surprise in our laps when we least expect it.
But while it’s obviously an emotional experience when someone has a chance to reunite with their long-lost dog , there’s also something beautiful in knowing that so many total strangers out there will work just as hard to reconnect someone with their lost wallet or even a toy .
Because as one story that came out of a disaster America is still reeling from illustrates, the smallest things can mean a lot in the darkest times.
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You’ve no doubt heard that over the weekend, tornados have devastated six states in the American midwest.
And while the National Weather Service reported that this series of over 30 different tornadoes affected Arkansas, Illinois, Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Missouri, it seems that western Kentucky got the worst of it.
And as we can see, that’s proved particularly true for a town of 2,600 in the state’s southwestern region called Dawson Springs.
And Katie Posten of New Albany, Indiana would soon find herself looking at an eerie sign of the power of those tornados from 150 miles away.
Because when she found this family photo stuck to her car’s windshield, she quickly cottoned onto its likely origins and took to social media in the hopes of reuniting a vulnerable family with a treasured heirloom.
In Posten’s words, “This is obviously an important piece of their family history and I have the opportunity to potentially return this to a family who has likely lost a lot, if not everything.”
Fortunately, there was one important clue on the photo that made this search feel less like trying to find a needle in a haystack.
On the back, we can see that someone left not only the date the photo was taken, but also said that it depicts Gertie and J.D. Swatzell.
And as Insider reported , Posten would soon discover from commenters that Swatzell is a common last name in Dawson Springs, so the photo likely originated there.
But it turned out that her posts on Twitter and Facebook were even more directly helpful than that.
That’s because Gertie Swatzell’s great-grandson Cole Swatzell happened to be tagged in the comments by a friend and could confirm that the woman in the photo was indeed his dad’s grandmother.
As a result, Posten has come into contact with the family and plans to bring the photo to them personally later this week.
As she put it, “I don’t want to mail it because I don’t want to chance it getting lost again. If it’s made it all this way, I would love to just put it in someone in the family’s hand so that they can make sure that it’s well taken care of.”
h/t: Insider