Find a Person With Only Some Photos

He was his own detective.  He hunted down the owner of a camera on his own.  Well, sort-of on his own.  Today being your own detective is a lot faster and easier than it was years ago.  Paul Shultz found the owner of a camera he discovered in the water on the coast of Key West. The camera was in a protective case, but was working fine.  He was wanting to return the camera to the owner - but he had to be his own detective.  The pictures themselves did not reveal the owner - yet they did.

What he did was he realized it was used in some kind of diving so he posted the pics on some diving sites.  He also saw some clues in the pictures like a tail number of a plane.  He tracked down the registration and verified that the plane was in Aruba the day the photo was taken.  He used Google Earth to identify some buildings and then posted the information and photos on the travel websites Cruisecritic and Aruba.com. Within two days he was notified by someone who recognized the people in the photos.

The camera belonged to Dick De Bruin, a sergeant in the Royal Dutch Navy.  He has been stationed with his family in Aruba for three years. The camera floated away from de Bruin while he and a dive team were salvaging an anchor from the USS Powell for a World War II memorial.

It is a good thing that the camera didn't belong to someone who lost it that was part of a witness protection program or was hiding from mob. The poin t of the story is, with some initiative and reasonable thinking there are all kinds of ways to be your own detective.