Lost camera leads to friendship for two families on Long Beach Island

When Carrie and Christian Witzke lost their camera while visiting family on Long Beach Island in June, they thought they had forever lost photos of their time at the shore as well as precious moments of their children, including those of Lukas, their third son, who was born last August. While getting ready to celebrate Lukas’ first birthday on Aug. 3, the couple received a call from Michele Jabin, whose family had spent a month trying to connect with the rightful owners, to let the Witzkes know they had found the camera and wanted to return it.

“They were pictures (of Lukas) from the hospital, from the christening, the first Christmas, everything. She thought she had lost them all on that camera,” Jabin, who has a home in Haven Beach that has been in the family for over 40 years, told The SandPaper in a phone interview. “It was just a miracle that we were able to track her down and that she gets to have her pictures back.”

Photo by Jack Reynolds
The two families meet up for the camera exchange.

When Jabin’s daughter and son-in-law Gillian and Fernando Giglio, who have two young boys of their own, found what appeared to be an expensive Nikon camera at the Taylor Avenue Park behind Bay Village in Beach Haven, they said they knew whoever had lost it was hurting. After waiting an hour at the playground for someone to show up and claim it, they decided to take it home and report it lost to the local police.

“You leave a camera like that, it disappears,” Fernando said. “We don’t need it.”

Hoping he would recognize someone in the photos, Fernando, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, said he was devastated after looking through them.

“The card was full, and I was just torn,” he said. “I couldn’t even look at that camera without feeling something. I knew whoever lost it was hurting. When you have health challenges, family means a lot.

“It’s not even the camera. It’s the photos,” he added. “Those photos, they’re priceless. And just when I started to look at the pictures, I got tears in my eyes.”

After a couple of weeks and still no word, Jabin reached out to The SandPaper for help in tracking down the owners of the camera.

“You can buy another camera. You can’t go back and get the pictures,” she said. “That’s what was so important to all of us.”

When SandPaper Photo Editor Ryan Morrill told Jabin he had found Lukas’ last name from a newborn picture taken at the hospital, the family conducted a two-hour-long Internet search before eventually finding Carrie Witzke’s phone number. Witzke said she was going through Lukas’ baby book when she received a call from Jabin. At first, Witzke said she thought Jabin was a telemarketer.

“I was just surprised at their persistence in trying to find me and all the things that they went through,” said Witzke. “I’m just really grateful to get the camera back, to get the pictures back so I have all the memories. It had all of his (Lukas’) firsts: his first bath, his first meal, the first time he rolled over. It had everything from when he was born through the first year, so I was pretty upset. I liked the camera; I had it for a few years. But I was mostly upset about the pictures of my three kids that were all gone.

“I think they’re very special people to go to all those extremes, to try to find me when they didn’t have to,” she added.

The families met up at Jabin’s home Saturday, Aug. 16, to exchange the camera and get acquainted. The Witzkes presented the Giglios with a “generous” gift certificate to The Gables for their efforts. They plan to meet up again in the future.

“LBI embodies this kind of community,” said Fernando. “We found a camera and made friends with a beautiful family with the same LBI values as us.”

— Kelley Anne Essinger


This article was published in The SandPaper.