We saw the images of destruction, debris and floods left behind by Hurricane Helene. But other images also emerged from the storm: family photos – snapshots of happy memories and milestones – left in disarray.
After October’s deadly hurricane, Taylor Schenker, who lives in Canton, North Carolina, Hard-hit nearby Asheville found herself with around 200 family photos that didn’t belong to her.
It started after the storm. Schenker’s house held up well for Helene, but she said her friend’s entire house was destroyed by flooding from the Swannanoa River. At least 220 people in six states died in the hurricane, including more than 40 in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville.
Schenker and her friend went for a walk to look at the house, which was one of many destroyed homes in Asheville.
“We spent about four hours digging in the mud, looking for any possessions we could find, because his house literally doesn’t exist anymore,” Schenker told CBS News last month. “And during that process, I found about four out of five individual photographs and we laid out the photos – along with some clothing and we found an American flag – along the riverbank, hoping that they would find people.”
Vanessa Graham via Photos d’Hélène
Schenker said thinking about the photos she left behind kept her up that night. “I just thought, ‘Here are these little photographs that miraculously survived all of this and are now sitting here and what happens if it rains or the wind blows and they can’t find their family ‘” she said. said. “It would be a shame because they survived all of that. And I know how special a memory like that can really be for someone.”
So Taylor went back the next day to take the photos and ended up finding more. She said it was obvious the photos belonged to multiple families.
“It was [a photo of] a college basketball team. It was a photo of a beloved dog. I found a wedding photo of a bride hugging someone,” she said. “You take photos because you have a moment you want to remember and so they all seem simply special.”
Realizing how many important family memories she now had, she launched Helen’s Photos Instagram page – a virtual lost and found. She hoped people would recognize the photos on her page and that word of mouth would help reunite them with their rightful owners.
The Instagram page is full of school portraits, Christmas cards, images of childhood friends and families on vacation. She even found a photo of Michael Jordan diving the ball that a local man said his father took years ago.
Schenker took them home, dusted them off, and filed them into files and trash cans for safekeeping until they could be returned to their owners.
Schenker said she found about 100 photos herself, but collected about 100 more from others who found them, including search and rescue teams. During our interview at the end of October, she said she had returned around 15% of the photos she had collected. She adds new photos to Instagram every day.
Every meeting is a comforting reminder that what she does matters. “To be able to experience that moment where you hand something so special to someone and then just give them a hug – because they probably lost their entire home in that situation – it’s such a privilege to get a glimpse of this moment in his life lives through these photographs and can return them to them,” she said.
Schenker sends photos to people who are no longer in the area, but she also hand-delivers photos belonging to families who remain nearby. In one case, a college-aged son found his family’s photos on her Instagram, contacted Schenker and connected her with his mother.
“We have now found five photos of this family, of these two sons, and when I met with the mother to put the photos together, she shared with me that one of her sons had indeed died,” Schenker said. “And so when they lost their home, they lost all memory of that child. Which is absolutely devastating, on top of the devastation that’s already happened.”
She said she recently went on another so-called photo walk — where she rummaged through debris for images — and recognized the woman’s late son in another photo.
Becky and Nancy Tate, a mother-daughter duo, also found old family photos through the Instagram page. “It was an extremely strange feeling just scrolling through social media and randomly seeing a photo of me when I was 10 years old in front of a Christmas tree,” Nancy Tate told CBS News on Instagram. “That’s how I discovered Hélène’s photos, by pure chance, by scrolling and seeing a photo of me covered in dirt.”
Tate family via Photos d’Hélène
“It’s a very surreal feeling knowing that all your stuff and photos have been lost, and then realizing that someone you’ve never met is trying to help people find those photos, just out of kindness.” , said Nancy. . “It really sums up the Asheville community.”
Nancy tagged her mother in the Instagram comments, saying her mother cried when she saw it. Becky told CBS News she felt a combination of joy and shock — “a period of high adrenaline and disbelief.”
Schenker said many families who lived in the same neighborhood before the hurricane recognized other people’s photos on Helene’s Photos Instagram page and helped connect Schenker.
“The process is definitely rewarding,” she said. “It’s fun to see the moment when a photo comes together and see people in the comments tagging each other and saying, ‘Hey, is that you?’ or ‘Oh my God, you just reminded me of this moment in my life that I had totally forgotten about.'”
She said she chose her name on Instagram because most of the photos we’ve seen of the hurricane show the devastation left behind — but her photos of Helen are fond memories of Asheville and life who was experienced there.
“You still can’t go to the grocery store without seeing piles of debris,” she said. “And I think that definitely made me and others celebrate those victories even more. Because you have to to get through everyday life now.”
