A family memento becomes a thrift shop mystery

YAKIMA, Wash.  --  Family pictures and videos are what so many of us hold dear.  So when the managers of a local thrift store came across a couple's home movies, they turned to social media for some help.

Kenny and Annette Sewell married on August 4, 1946. They celebrated their golden anniversary -- 50 years of marriage -- with a VHS tape filled with family photos of their lives and their love.

So imagine their family`s surprise when that keepsake turned up at a Yakima thrift store two weeks ago.

Debbie Jones and Robbin Parsley manage the Olde Lighthouse Shoppe.  They were determined to return the VHS to the rightful family. So they posted a video to the shop`s Facebook page, explaining the tape had been donated inside a sleeve for the movie, “Titanic”.

Ten days later, with help from a friend at the Yakima Herald, they found Laura Sewell, who is the granddaughter of Kenny and Annette.  She says she remembers putting the video inside the “Titanic” sleeve the last time she`d viewed it three years ago.

She says the tape had been stolen from her shed in Selah, Wash., two years back.

“It starts with my grandma and grandpa, when they were little with baby pictures, and then it shows them growing up.  It shows their wedding picture and then it starts with the four kids and then it branches off to their families,” says Sewell.

“If it was mine, I definitely would want to get it back,” says Parsley.

“It was important. Anything that says ‘golden anniversary’ on it is important,” says Jones.