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OGDEN — Nancy Harris recalls thousands of precious moments while thumbing through a box of family photographs: "Mission photos ... there's just kind of everything in here," Harris said. But Saturday that special box of memories almost became a memory itself.
Around 4 p.m. Garrett Allred was on his daily bike ride down 12th Street and Wall Avenue when he spotted what he thought were papers all over the road.
"There had to be thousands of them, tons of them … at first I thought they were fliers," Allred said. He reached down to pick one up and discovered they were photos.
As Allred began collecting the photos one by one from the street and a nearby parking lot, his efforts were quickly noticed by others.
"In the next 15 minutes person by person, up to about 20 to 30 people, came and started jumping in front of the traffic. The cars were stopping, people were honking and people were just helping me grab all this stuff," Allred said.
Allred put all the pictures in a box he found near the road and took them home. Late Saturday he posted a few pictures on Facebook, asking people to help find the owner.
Twelve hours later Nancy Harris was tagged in the post.
That day, Harris and her husband had been helping her cousins move to a new house in Salt Lake City, and she didn't even realize the box of family photos had fallen into the road in transit.
"This is like the worst box to have fallen off the trailer; everything else would have been easily replaceable," Harris said.
The photos belonged to her aunt, her cousin's mother, who died two years ago. Harris and her extended family are grateful Allred and the group of strangers took the time to pick them up from the road and find her.
"The power of social media is amazing," Harris said.
