A thrift store find turned into a months-long quest as a 22-year-old man sought to find the mystery family in the photos he discovered. But with a little motivation and the help of social media, a Lombard family has been reunited with precious memories they thought were lost forever.
The journey of the photos, which were in the form of projection slides, starts at a Downers Grove thrift store, where Greg Kozlick was shopping for electronics last summer.
After spotting a wireless router box, he looked inside only to find anything but electronics.
“I ended up seeing a tray like with a bunch of different photos in it,” said Kozlick. “It said ‘Sue’s wedding’ on the front of it.”
Months later, Kozlick purchased a projector to view the slides, which revealed pictures of a couple’s wedding from the 1960s. He quickly took to Facebook, posting some of the photos in hopes someone would recognize the couple.
That someone ended up being an old high school friend who recognized her own grandparents.
NBC 5 captured the moment Kozlick handed over the photos to Sue Brose of Lombard.
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After viewing some of the slides, it became clear that these weren’t just her missing wedding photos but her late father’s photo collection of family trips, her graduation and more.
“This is incredible. It’s the best gift I could have had,” said Brose. “I’m very sentimental about things like that and I just recently had a stroke so I’m actually thinking even more in those terms.”
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Kozlick also surprised Brose with another gift; digitizing the photos so Brose could access the pictures without having to buy a projector.
You can watch the full reunion in the video above this article.
