How stranger helped couple reunite with GoPro lost six years ago
A kind stranger has reunited a GoPro with its rightful owners after they lost it while surfing about six years ago.
Justin Humphries, 18, found the waterproof camera while metal detecting at a beach in Ocean Grove, a seaside town in Victoria, on June 24.
After a successful social media campaign that attracted the attention of thousands, Mr Humphries managed to get in contact with the owner after just four days.
He told Yahoo News Australia he was at work, at an antique market in Geelong, when he received a message with a link to the owner’s Facebook profile.
“I was pretty excited, I was waiting to take lunch break so I could message her,” Mr Humphries said.
He was hesitant at first though, having received several prior false leads, and thought it was likely it may have been the same case.
But just as he began to give up hope, one of the owners, Marie, replied to his message after her boyfriend, Jay, read a local news story about the found GoPro.
On Saturday, Mr Humphries met with Marie and Jay to hand over the camera.
“They were pretty happy because they really wanted to see the footage on there,” he said.
The teenager said the couple were in the shallow water at Ocean Grove Beach when they accidentally dropped the camera while taking it off a surfboard.
“They lost it in 2013 and just had gone back to go and look for it every now and then,” Mr Humphries said.
He said the couple had moved to St Kilda since losing the camera, so didn’t see Mr Humphries’ original posts to local Facebook pages about what he’d found.
Inspired by a man in the United States who shares his metal-detecting adventures on YouTube, Mr Humphries has been searching beaches for gems for more than a year.
He offers his searching services for free and has helped many people find items they lost while at the beach, sharing his discoveries to his Instagram page.
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