Courtesy Diane Doyle
Jon Adas and Diane Doyle didn’t know each other before this week. Both are from the Denver area, both visited Grand County a few weeks ago and both of them like to take pictures. But Doyle had lost her camera.
Doyle is known as the “camera hound” to her friends and family. When she went up to Grand Lake with her friends for Constitution Week, she brought her camera, of course.
“We were taking pictures and having fun,” Doyle said. “We were going back into the place we were staying and I was walking and grabbing all my stuff and that’s when I realized my camera bag felt light.”
Doyle’s camera was gone. She and her friends retraced their steps, driving everywhere they had gone, pulling over and searching the roads. However, Doyle still couldn’t find the camera, which had over 6,000 photos saved on it.
Doyle said she prayed to Saint Anthony, the patron saint of lost things, hoping and waiting for someone to return her camera.
Jon Adas, from Aurora, spends his weekends around Grand Lake and Granby. He does a lot of wildlife photography, especially of moose.
Three weekends ago, he stayed at Stillwater Pass and forgot to check his fuel gauge as he drove up and down the mountains. On his drive into Granby, he ran out of gas, decided to walk to town and crossed the street so that he could watch oncoming traffic.
On the shoulder, just barely into the grass, Adas saw a small Canon camera. He picked it up, got gas and returned home.
He pulled up the photos on the camera, all 6,000 of them, and looked for familiar faces and places that might be able to connect him with the owner. It was important to him to try and return it.
“I’m a photographer,” he said. “I come from a big family. I’m the youngest of seven. The times we get together, I take a lot of photographs. I’ve always treasured the photos … If it was my camera, I would hope someone would try to locate me.”
And try he did. Adas called the gas station near where he had found the camera. He reached out to news stations in Denver, hoping someone might pick up the story to spread the word.
On Monday, over two weeks after he found the camera, CBS4 interviewed him and aired his story. Adas was hopeful he’d be able to find the owner within a week. It didn’t take that long.
A little after 5 p.m. that Monday, Doyle was standing outside. Her boyfriend came out from the house and told her that her phone was blowing up. She was getting phone calls and emails from work, from family, from friends.
It seemed as if everyone she knew had seen the news. They recognized themselves in the pictures shown on TV and knew Doyle was usually the photographer at these events.
Within two hours, Doyle and Adas connected. They met up Wednesday afternoon in Aurora. They talked for a few hours and Adas shared some of his photography with Doyle.
Doyle, using her camera that was beat up but still working, took a photo of the two of them together. She was ecstatic to have her camera back.
“We need more kindness and goodness,” Doyle said. “We need more stories like this in our world today. It was such a kind gesture. He was a super nice guy — and one heck of a photographer.”