You don't hear stories like this every day. For travelers, it's not a bad idea to include a locked photo with contact details inside the camera or phone.
First, Lucas picked up the bag from the cab driver's daughter. Lucas then traveled to her parents' home in Pace, a small town in eastern France, and handed the bundle off to an American friend, Molly Bloom, whom she had met while attending Lincoln Elementary School in 1991. Bloom was in town for the holidays to visit her brother John, who teaches in a school near Pace. The Bloom family stopped by to visit with the Lucas family.
Agreeing to shepherd the bag back to the states, Bloom tucked it into her luggage and returned to her home in Petaluma, Calif., where she mailed the bag to the Smileys. The package arrived on Jan. 10 as the Smileys were getting ready to watch Oregon play Auburn in the national championship game.
The contents were intact. Richard inspected the camera and noticed that someone had switched the camera's digital language function to French. And there was a surprise.
"There was an extra photo. It showed the taxi driver, Althony LaLanne, in the living room of his home in Paris," Richard said. "What joy. But, even greater is the honesty and extraordinary effort that was taken to return these belongings to us."
