SILT, Colo. — When 57-year-old Silt resident Jeff Zelenka found an Olympus 100 camera in the Colorado River, he had very little hope of finding its owners. He had even less hope that the camera’s SD card, which it would turn out had been underwater for over five years, would have any recoverable images.
In an act of curiosity, Zelenka took the camera home and plugged the SD card into his computer.
The underwater camera’s SD card still held over 900 pictures and videos.
“Literally hundreds of pictures with the JPEG numbers came up, and I thought, well, I might be able to find the owner,” Zelenka said.
On July 28, Zelenka was floating the Colorado River with five of his friends when one of them decided to pull to the side of the river for lunch in Silt. When Zelenka pulled his kayak on shore, he stepped on something unusual.
“I just took a couple of steps and I felt the ground underneath me kind of wiggle, and I looked down, and here was a camera laying face down, right on the edge of the rocks and the water there,” he said.
The next day, Zelenka managed to open the compartment that held the SD card while fidgeting with the camera, parts of which were completely broken.
“It was in remarkably good shape compared to what the camera was,” he said.
After cleaning the water and mud off the card, he plugged it into his computer and found it still worked. The last picture on the camera was dated from Dec. 31, 2018.
“I thought, ‘Wow, it’s been in the river for a little over five and a half years,” Zelenka said.
Zelenka looked through the pictures, saving the ones with recognizable faces in them. The images ranged from captured moments of daily life, to a Costa Rica vacation, and even some wedding pictures. On July 31, he shared the pictures on approximately 21 local Facebook groups (few of which denied his post) with the title: “Looking for rightful owner.”
“I think I had it up for a couple hours. I was sitting there thinking, ‘Wow, maybe this is kind of a dream that I’m going to find anybody that knows these people,'” he said. “Well around five o’clock that evening … my Facebook literally exploded. I was getting probably two or three messages a minute.”