Family reunited with lost memories after surprise thrift store find

    Oklahoma (KOCO) -- An Oklahoma family was reunited with lost family pictures that they thought were lost forever after a tornado.

This week, Cortni Taylor discovered an SD card full of priceless family pictures inside a camera at a thrift store.

“I was actually looking for a gift for my best friend because she wanted one of those small digital cameras," Taylor said. "I brought it home and noticed that there was an SD card in it. There was a ton of great family photos, and I thought if it were me, I would want to have them."

She found more than 300 lost family pictures that dated back to 2011, from family reunions to backyard barbecues.

Taylor said she knew she had to find the family, so she went online. Within hours, the Internet found them.

“When I received them in my Messenger, I just couldn’t believe it," Amber White, whose photos were returned to her, said. "To see them, it broke my heart and made me happy at the same time."

White said the camera that stored those precious family photos was in her aunt's storage when it was hit by a 2023 Norman tornado. Those irreplaceable family memories were gone in a flash.

“That camera had pictures on it that we never thought we’d see again," White said.

On Sunday, the family from McCloud was given the gift of seeing those moments they thought were lost forever.

“There was a picture of me and my mother who passed away in June of 2018 that I have never seen before that was on that camera roll," White said. "A person that would do that just blows my mind because a lot of people would just throw it in the trash."

But Taylor knew that returning the pictures meant something deeper.

“I’m actually an intern at the Grady County Historical Society Museum in Chickasha, and I’m going to school for museum studies, and a lot of that has to do with photo preservation and archiving photos. Photos have always been important to me and preserving someone’s history and family history," Taylor said.