After Hurricane Helene, North Carolina Woman Uses Social Media to Reunite Families With Lost Photos

We’ve all seen the images of the destruction, debris and flooding caused by Hurricane Helene in October 2024. However, other images came out of the storm: family photos — snapshots of happy memories and important milestones — left behind in the mess. After the dust settled, Taylor Schenker, who lives in the Asheville area, found herself with about 200 family photos that didn’t belong to her. While her house weathered the storm fairly well, her friend’s entire home was destroyed by flooding. Taylor and her friend spent about four hours digging through the mud, looking for her friend’s belongings. During that process, they found four or five individual photographs, which they laid out along the bank, hoping they would be reunited with their owners. Taylor said thinking about those photos kept her up that night, and that’s when she decided to go back the next day and try to find more photos. She quickly discovered there were even more. She immediately started an Instagram page, a virtual lost-and-found, hoping people would recognize the photos so she could begin to get them back to where they belonged. The page was filled with school pictures, Christmas cards, images of childhood friends, and families on vacation. Taylor categorized some 200 photos in folders and bins for safekeeping, and it wasn’t long before people began claiming their pictures. By late October, she had returned about 15% of the photos she had collected. In one case, a college-aged son found his family photos on the Instagram page, reached out to Taylor, and connected her with his mother. “When they lost their home, they lost all their memories of this child, which is absolutely devastating in addition to the devastation that has already happened,” said Taylor. She said that many families who lived in the same neighborhood before the hurricane have recognized other people's photos and helped connect them to Taylor. “The process is definitely fulfilling,” said Taylor. “It’s fun to see the moment a photograph is reunited.”