Tracking down the owner of an SD card from Israel

This was originally posted on Facebook over the weekend

I just emailed a Rabbi in Nashville, TN. Why? Well, my mother came to me tonight and said "A few years ago I found a memory card on a sidewalk. I never looked at it. I left my primary memory card at home by mistake this trip and had this one to use. Someone's photos are on it."

So what does a geek do? Opens up the photos on the card and starts looking to see if I can figure out who's photos they are.

Couple of things I figured out.

1) The photos are from May/June 2008, taken on a Canon SD800 IS
2) The owner appears to have taken a flight on May 26
3) The photos appear to be of a group of people that took a trip to Israel together
4) One boy is wearing a SJ Sharks hat
5) I wasn't able to find any other discernable info, except for one guy wearing a Borat shirt that read, "Visit Israel, VERY NICE yes"
6) After going through the photos a few times I noticed that in some of them are people wearing white baseball caps.
7) After looking at many of the photos with hats I was able to find "Nashville, Tennessee" on the side, and on the front reads "Israel Trip" with some words wrapping around the top of that. I finally deciphered that the words around Israel Trip and they appear to read "Congregation Sherith Israel"

Armed with that info, I went to google and found the congregations website, and very quickly found a photo of a guy (late 20's or early 30s) that appears to be in the photos from 2008. A little more digging and I find out he's a Rabbi there, and finally I found an email address for him.

We will see if it is him. I emailed him a photo and asked if he could assist me in figuring out whose memory card it is. The first thing I need him to do though is tell me if he's the one in the photo or not, if not I'll start searching again.

What an exciting Friday night. All this after going to dinner and a movie with Natalie.

Saturday Evening Update

I heard back from the Rabbi, he confirmed that it was him and his wife in the photo that I sent over. As a follow up I sent him another photo, the first on the SD card, to see if he knew who was in that photo. I figured it was likely the owner, or the owner’s spouse.

Sunday Update

I got another email back from the Rabbi, this time he had a name for me. He wasn’t positive, but he thought that the picture was of a particular person from the trip, and he had an email address for that person. A quick search on google and Facebook showed me that the person he suggested lives(d) in Phoenix, AZ. That would actually make some sense, as to how my mother came across this SD card. My mother lives in Tucson. I emailed the person Sunday afternoon, I have yet to hear back, but if I don’t in a couple of days I will try to send them a Facebook message as well.

April 9th Update

I heard back from the lady in Phoenix, she told me that she believed the photos were from her Cousin who lives in Nashville. I then was contacted by her Cousin and was provided her address. She apparently lost the SD card in the Phoenix airport, or at least she believes she did. My mother is now putting the photos back on the card (she had used the card while she was here) and will be sending it to Nashville to its owner.

Recent Comments

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That would be great if the owner hunt pays off!
Posted By: B Hathaway on Apr 2013

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Chris Hammond

Chris Hammond is a father, husband, leader, software developer, photographer and car guy. Chris focuses on the latest in technology including artificial intelligence (AI) and has spent decades becoming an expert in ASP.NET and DotNetNuke (DNN) development. You will find a variety of posts relating to those topics here on the website. For more information check out the about Chris Hammond page.

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