On a Saturday morning, something unusual caught the attention of Katie Posten as she approached her car in the driveway. In the windshield, something like a receipt or a note was stuck, KRON4 reported.
Posten, 30, inspected the material closer and saw a black and white photo of a woman with a striped sundress and scarf outfit. In her lap was a little boy. “Gertie Swatzell & J.D. Swatzell 1942,” a cursive note was written on the back.
She then found out that the photo came a long way towards her windshield as it had almost 130 mile-journey with the help of the winds.
The middle of the U.S. has been hit by tornadoes on Friday night, and Posten has been monitoring it. The disaster, which came near her New Albany, Indiana home, left dozens of people dead. She thought that the photo might be from a tornado-hit residence.
“Seeing the date, I realized that was likely from a home hit by a tornado. How else is it going to be there?” she said in Sunday’s phone interview. “It’s not a receipt. It’s well-kept photo.”
Posten took to social media the sentimental thing she found, hoping it will be returned to its owners.
And that became possible through Facebook.
“A lot of people shared it on Facebook. Someone came across it who is friends with a man with the same last name, and they tagged him,” she said.
A Dawson Springs, Kentucky family owns the photo, Cole Swatzell, said. The location is almost 130 miles away from Posten’s house.
Posten intends to bring the photo back to the Swatzell family very soon.
“It’s really remarkable, definitely one of those things, given all that has happened, that makes you consider how valuable things are — memories, family heirlooms, and those kinds of things,” she said. “It shows you the power of social media for good. It was encouraging that immediately there were tons of replies from people, looking up ancestry records, and saying ‘I know someone who knows someone and I’d like to help.’”
