OKLAHOMA CITY (KOCO) – Cherished family photos can last forever, as one family in Oklahoma believed when a tornado tore through a storage unit at a relative’s home in Norman in 2023.
These priceless images were eventually rediscovered a few years later when Cortni Taylor bought a camera at a thrift store.
She noticed an SD card in the camera which was found to have the family photos on it. She’s now trying to get the photos back to the family.
“I was actually looking for a gift for my best friend because she wants one of those little small digital cameras, and so the one that I bought, I brought it home and I noticed that there was an SD card in it,” she said. “And so, whenever I put the SD card in, I noticed there was a ton of just really great family photos and I thought, you know, if it were me, I would want to have them.”
The SD card contained more than 300 family photos.
The pictures date back to 2011 and include images of family reunions and backyard barbecues.
Taylor went online to search for the family and found them within hours.
Amber White said the camera was in her aunt’s storage when the tornado came through and tore it up.
“When I received them in my Messenger, I just said I couldn’t believe it,” she said. “To see him, it was … it broke my heart and made me happy at the same time.”
White said the tornado led the family to believe the photos were lost forever.
“That camera had pictures on it that we thought that we’d never see again,” White said.
On Sunday, the family from McLoud, Oklahoma was given back the memories they thought were lost to time.
“There was a picture of me and my mother who passed in 2018 that I’ve never seen before that was on that camera roll, and the person that would do that is just, it blows my mind,” White said. “Because a lot of people would just throw it in the trash.”
Taylor said she is an intern at the Grady County Historical Society Museum in Chickasha and is in school for museum studies, which involves her preserving and archiving photos and artifacts.
“So photos have just always been very important to me, as well as preserving someone’s history and family history,” she said.
Taylor said she knew returning the lost photos would mean something special to the family.
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