Fisherman finds stranger’s lost camera after 13 years in water

A digital camera that had seemed forever lost has been found after 13 years.

Coral Amayi lost her camera in 2010 while tubing on the Animus River in Colorado, following her best friend’s wedding.

“I had gotten tossed from my tube at Smelter Rapid,” Amayi told FOX 31 Denver.

“And I came back up, got my tube, and my camera was missing,” she told the station.

Many of the photos on Amayi’s camera had not been uploaded to her computer, leaving her “heartbroken,” according to FOX 31.

“I remember getting back to my boyfriend’s house and uncontrollably crying and upset,” she said.

Amayi reportedly thought she would ever see her camera again.

All that changed, when a fisherman found something in shallow water, FOX 31 reported.

“I was walking along and saw it sticking out of the sand,” the angler, Spencer Greiner, told FOX 31.

“It was in rough shape, so I really didn’t have any hopes of getting anything off of it, I was just planning to throw it away, and then curiosity got the best of me, and I had to see what was on it,” he said.

Greiner was able to use a screwdriver and open the door to access the camera’s memory card.

He doubted whether the memory card would even work due to its poor state. 

“But I plugged it into the computer, and it read immediately and I was like, ‘Oh cool, let’s see what sort of treasures we’re going to find on this memory card.’”

While scrolling through the photos, he found images of a tubing trip, a bachelorette party, and a wedding, FOX 31 reported.

Determined to track down the camera’s owner, Greiner posted some of the images in a local Durango Facebook group.

He asked: “Did you get married on June 12th, 2010 in the Durango area? Did you have an ugly brown stretch station wagon at your bachelorette party? Do you recognize any of these people? If so please contact me.“

Within an hour, Greiner had people coming forward after recognizing themselves in several of the images, FOX 31 reported.

“It was less than an hour after I made the post and the groom from the wedding was like, ‘That’s me and my wife!’” Greiner told the station.

“So, I was shocked that it happened so quickly,” Greiner said.

FOX 31 reported that the bride and groom who recognized the photos then reached out to Amayi with the good news that her camera had been found.

“I got up and was like dancing in the bathroom, and I was like, ‘Who am I going to tell?! I need to tell this to somebody like right now,’” Amayi shared.

From where the camera was lost to where it was found downstream, Greiner believes the camera traveled 1.2 miles down the Colorado river, FOX 31 shared.

After 13 years in the river, Amayi’s camera had withstood the elements of nature.

“It just blows my mind that an SD card still worked after all that time,” Amayi said.

Fox News Digital reached out to both Amayi and Greiner for comments.