The Power of the Internet (Amazing or Scary?)

Did I mention that Teresa found a camera while we were on the Big Island?

Here is the story:

While we were on the Big Island, we went to the 1990 lava flow in Puna to see the brand new black sand beach. Madame Pele had closed most of the National Park, so we definitely wanted to visit this site because it was the only place we could walk over lava fields.

After we spent some time at the beach, making sand castles in the black sand, we started back toward the car, crossing about 1/2 mile of lava. Teresa spotted something: a CAMERA! Immediately, she wanted to know how we could find the person who lost it.

While eating our ice cream (see Top Ten Post for details), we talked about what we were going to do with the camera. Uncle Tim turned it on and looked at the pictures. He said, "We SAW these people!" When we first climbed up to walk toward the beach, they were headed back to their car. The Dad said something like "The beach is out there! Just keep walking." And, by looking at the pictures, we knew this was their first stop in Hawaii. There were lots of other pictures, which Tim thought, with a little detective work, we could use to find these people. So, we decided NOT to turn the camera in to the people at the ice cream shop. Instead, we left our name and number, just in case.


Still feeling bad that the camera was on vacation without it's "people," we decided to document the camera on vacation (ala Flat Stanley)


Ha Ha Ha

When we got back to Oahu, Papa and Uncle Tim got to work finding the lost people.

1st: they downloaded the pictures to my computer to get a better look. They saw lots of identifying information

a) 2 birthday cakes: one for a teenager, with her first name on it and one for the mother, with her first name on it

b) a picture of the teenager wearing her high school cheerleading uniform, with the name of the school mascot

c) a picture taken at a high school football game with a sign in the background with a cheer for the opposing team

2nd: Uncle Tim googled the name of the mascot along with the name of the opposing team, and low and behold, a high school in CA popped up. We looked at the cheerleading pictures and matched the uniform!

3rd: he looked at the roster for the cheerleading squad, and there was a cheerleader with a name matching the cake!

4th: Since we knew the mother's first name, Tim typed in the mother's first name with the daughter's last name in to the white pages

and

up popped a phone number and address!

We called

and

they INDEED had lost their camera!

Amazing or Scary?