Joe Sabia said his friend found an SD card in the sand while on safari in sourthern Africa
By Gabriella Iannetta
The international mystery may have started in Zimbabwe but ended in the state of Connecticut.
Joe Sabia, who is a Milford-native, said when his friend found an SD card in the sand while on safari in sourthern Africa, he immediately knew he had to find the owner.
“I said ‘I’m holding on to this’ with the intent of going back to my laptop and seeing if there were actual images on the card,” Sabia told NBC Connecticut.
http://www.thezimbabwenewslive.com/main-news-18160-joe-sabia-asking-internet-help-track-owner-lost-sd-card-found-zimbabwe.html
Sabia remembered seen a YouTube sensation from 2011 about a New York man,Todd Bieber, who found a roll of film in Brooklyn and, with the help of the internet, was able to return the film to its rightful owner in Paris.
The 32-year-old videographer thought this could be “digital version” of Beiber’s story and created a six-minute YouTube video to recount how his trip to Zimbabwe turned into a modern-day lost and found mission.
In the video, Sabia finds that the SD card has 13 photos of a group of friends from about four years ago. One photo from four years ago was even taken on the exact day– Dec. 31– that Sabia’s buddies found the SD card.
Sabia hopelessly looks for clues about who these people may be. There was a jersey framed on the wall….some shelves….all clearly in someone’s basement.
But it ended up being a phone number on the water heater that lead Sabia a little closer to his SD Cinderella.
The phone number was a Fairfield area code.
“The company is based in Fairfield County, Connecticut. Someone here is from Fairfield County, Connecticut!” Sabia is heard exclaiming on camera.
After making the video, Sabia’s friends helped sharing the post on social meda sites like Reddit.
“Within five hours someone knew someone who knew someone who eventually found the girl who is in the photos,” Sabia told NBC Connecticut News in a Skype interview.
Turns out the girl from the photos wasn’t that far from Sabia at all.
“All of a sudden the picture pops up and it’s me and I freak out. I was like this isn’t real,” Rebecca Sheinman told NBC Connecticut.
The young woman and her family had taken the same safari trip around the same time Sabia did in December 2015.
Sheinman, 22, who is originally from Wilton, said she was on the phone with her mom on Wednesday night when her dad grabbed the phone.
“He said, ‘Girly, get a computer’ and I hear in his voice he is freaking out!” Sheiman said.
Sheinman’s dad had gotten an email from a friend with Sabia’s link. Sheinman and her dad soon emailed Sabia to thank him for finding her SD card…even though she didn’t know she had lost it in the first place.
And just like that, Sabia traveled thousands of miles back home from Africa to find that the owner of this lost SD card was also a native in his home state.
In another serendipitous twist, Sheinman said she will be moving to New York City after she graduates from college in Michigan–the same city where Sabia lives right now.
The two plan to meet up sometime in May when Sheinman returns to exchange the SD card and most likely, a ton of stories.
“I would love to put a bow around this whole thing. I want to be able to hand her her digital card and talk about our stories.” Sabia told NBC Connecticut.
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