Salt Lake City, UT (CBS/KUTV) -- When Brandy Daniels realized her car had been broken into last April, she knew her camera was taken by the thieves. It wasn't the loss of the camera that hurt the most but the one thousand or so pictures that were stored in the camera, memories now gone forever.
"I was really bummed," she said. Among the pictures were photos of her daughter whom she adopted a year and a half ago. "That was my life," she said of the photos which she never copied over to her computer.
Out of nowhere last week, a friend from high school called her saying someone found her camera and posted one of the pictures on Facebook. Brandy immediately checked out the picture and recognized it as a photo she took with the stolen camera.
Chelsea McKell had been wondering who owned the camera she found mysteriously sitting at a park in Bountiful last week. The camera was loaded with pictures of what seemed to be a "cute family". "I would be devastated if I lost a camera like this," said McKell, who as a mother herself, realized the value of the pictures to the mother of the cute little girl in most of the photos.
McKell posted one of the pictures on Facebook asking friends to share it and ask others whether they recognized the people in the photo. Three days later, one of her Facebook friends led her to Brandy. "I never would have found her without Facebook," she said.
Brandy met Chelsea at the park and found her camera intact with all the pictures still there. "I'm amazed," she said of Chelsea's efforts in getting the camera back to her. "I don't know if I would have made the same effort," Brandy added.
Chelsea said it felt good to do something nice for someone. The two women talked as if they'd known each other all along."We're friends on Facebook now," said Chelsea.