A New York man who found a briefcase filled with old photos in a public park trash can was able to reunite the photos with family members of the owners.
Dimitri Romanenko said he was walking in Elmwood Park in Syracuse when he spotted an old briefcase thrown into the trash.
Romanenko discovered the briefcase contained what appeared to be a family’s photos and personal documents from the 1930s-1960s.
Romanenko posted photos of his discovery on Facebook in the hopes of finding someone who recognized the people in the pictures.
A TV news report on the photos came to the attention of Dorothy Cooper, who recognized the photos as belonging to Geraldine Neary and Robert “Bob” Hunt, her deceased aunt and uncle.
“It just brings back a lot of memories and I’m sure once everybody else looks at these pictures, they’ll bring back memories for them too,” Cooper told WSYR-TV.
Cooper said her family does not know how the photos ended up in a public park trash can.
“I think it was a shame that someone would just abandon pictures like this because you cannot replace these,” Cooper said. “These are irreplaceable and I just think it’s a tragedy that they would just discard somebody else’s property like this. Who did it? I have no idea.”