SACRAMENTO -- One California woman got a lot more than she bargained for when she found a thumb drive full of wedding photos inside the lunch bag she purchased from a thrift store.
“I needed a new lunch bag for work, and it looked like it was brand new and it was cute so I bought it,” Michelle de Mercado said.
She purchased the lunch bag from a Sacramento thrift store — thinking she scored a good find.
But when she got home and looked inside, she discovered something that didn’t belong there: a thumb drive.
“At first I thought…‘oh gosh what’s on it,’” Mercado said.
She got curious and opened up the files on her computer, discovering they were wedding photos.
Mercado knew she had to get the pictures back in the right hands.
“If someone found something that was mine, I’d want them to return it, so I posted the pictures to Facebook, and the rest was history,” she said.
Fifty-four shares and 84 comments later, Mercado was able to connect the blushing bride with a real woman, Jessica Black.
“She sent me the photos and I was like, ‘oh my goodness, that’s me! Those are my wedding photos,’” Black said.
Black, a California native, said she grew up and got married in Sacramento back in April 2010.
She and her husband Stephen are now a happy family of five. They recently moved to Texas and bought their first home in San Antonio.
But her parents and in-laws still live in Sacramento, leading Black to believe that's how the photos ended up in a local thrift store.
“I don’t know if one of our families accidentally had a flash drive of our photos and I don’t know how it randomly ended up in a lunch box, but I was happy that someone was able to find it so fast,” Black said.
Just why the thumb drive was left in the lunch bag still remains a mystery — but Jessica is thankful that the photos of her special day will soon be back where they belong.
“It was definitely a wonderful day, and I’m so glad that I have photos to remember it because the wedding day is always so busy and chaotic and it just goes by so fast,” she said. "So, it’s good to have those memories captured that you can have forever. It’s just a special, sweet memory.”
