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Man goes on mission to reunite lost baby photos with owner

Indianapolis man found them on northeast side
Posted at 7:09 PM, May 19, 2017
and last updated 2017-05-19 19:31:26-04

INDIANAPOLIS – These days, it’s easy to keep memorable photos backed up digitally, especially with social media. But what would you do if you lost an irreplaceable photo album from the 1980s?

One local man found a lost book of baby photos – one of the snapshots taken the day of a baby’s birth – and he went on a mission to reunite the special item with its owner.

Eric Thacker lives in Harbour Pointe Apartments on the northeast side near Binford and Allisonville.

Thacker found the flip-book of baby photos lying on the pavement last Sunday and said someone had been moving things in that area in a U-Haul the day before.

The photos seem to span the first year or two of a little girl’s life, beginning on her day of birth: February 22, 1988. A photo reads “20 minutes old” – marking a priceless moment caught on camera.

“It seemed like it would be you know totally irreplaceable,” Thacker said. “Everything's digital these days, so we have backups of everything, but, for instance, this one's a Polaroid, there are no copies of that.”

Thacker says he took the album inside, showing it to his wife. She told him he might try posting on Reddit, on the Indianapolis sub. That way, he could spread the word and find the owner.

Some people may just toss the photos into a box – or perhaps into the trash. But Thacker says that just didn’t seem right.

“They took the time to put it in the album with the beads and everything. So I think it was probably very important to them,” Thacker said. “If this had happened to my mom she probably would've been really upset.  

And this story already has a happy ending. 

Thanks to Thacker’s good deed, there’s been success: An employee from Harbour Pointe Apartments tells RTV6 they have been able to identify the owner of the photos and are working to get them back to her.