Flash drive of old photos returned to owner after long search

March 11 (UPI) -- A mysterious flash drive loaded with old photos that turned up in a Detroit mailbox has been returned to its owner after a months-long search.

Chad Audi, founder and president of Detroit Rescue Mission Ministries, said the flash drive somehow ended up being delivered to the organization's mailbox last year, with no sign of the intended delivery address for the object.

The drive was loaded with old photos, and a person who recognized someone from a photo in a December broadcast on WJBK-TV posted about the pictures in a Facebook group for alumni of Alma High School in Alma, Mich.

The post led to the mystery being unraveled, as Alma graduate Scott Harrison revealed he was the one who loaded the photos onto the drive.

Harrison said he took the photos 40 years ago while he was a student at the school. He said his mother, who was a teacher at the school, found a cache of his old photos in a closet in February 2020 and he set about digitizing the pictures.

Harrison said the flash drive was supposed to have been delivered to the Midland, Mich., mailbox of his classmate Kathi, whose father, a popular biology teacher at Alma, was featured in several of the pictures.

Audi said he was happy to finally return the flash drive to Harrison.

"He was so excited, emotional, and very happy that he received his memories back," Audi told WJBK-TV.

Harrison said the photos have now finally gotten to Kathi to share with her father, who now lives in Indiana.

"They were really thrilled. It was kind of a nostalgic reunion," he said. "We all had a laugh about it. It was a nice story in the middle of all this chaos that is the pandemic."