LAPUSH — An unexpected find on a West End beach united a California family with a British Columbia family that never had met but share a love for the Olympic Peninsula coastline and family photographs.
While Randi Keeton of Santa Rosa, Calif., lived with her Army husband at Joint Base Lewis-McChord near Tacoma, she discovered a love for the Peninsula’s Pacific coast.
Even after the family returned to California upon his discharge from the Army, it remained Keeton’s favorite place to vacation, she said.
So in September, Keeton and three of her cousins visited the area.
Phil Fraikin of Rossland, B.C. — with his wife, Shauna Davis, and two children, Skylar and Ella Fraikin — also were vacationing in the Olympic Peninsula, camping at Sol Duc Hot Springs while visiting local attractions.
Their paths never crossed in person, but a small GoPro high-definition camera brought them together via social media four months later.
When Keeton took her vacation, she expected to find driftwood, shells and wave-smoothed stones on the beach.
On Sept. 13, as she and three cousins walked First Beach in LaPush at the tide line, she found the usual remnants of sea life — and the small GoPro camera encased in a sand-encrusted waterproof housing.
“It just happened to be right in my path,” Keeton said.
Her first thought was that it might have washed up from the 2011 Japan tsunami, lost by a family in that tragedy across the Pacific.
But she discarded the thought because the camera was in good condition, she said.
Keeton brought the case home with her to California and opened the casing.
The camera was in perfect condition, so she put the memory chip into her computer to see if she could identify the owner.
On it, she found a series of pictures of a family — mother, father and two young children — apparently on vacation.
The time stamp on the photos indicated that the photos had been taken in 2012, she said, adding that she wasn’t sure if the camera’s calendar was set properly.
“I hadn’t updated my own,” she said.
Keeton found one picture that showed four faces clearly enough, then posted the image on the social-media site Facebook and other online sites in the hopes that someone might recognize the family.
“I felt like I was invading their privacy,” she said.
There was still no indication as to where the owners lost the camera, who they were or where they lived.
While the camera could have been dropped on First Beach, it also could have been dragged south from Canada by ocean currents, she said.
However, it was clear how the camera was lost.
The final two photos were taken from what looked like a rock on a beach.
The second to last showed the father posing in front of a giant driftwood root system, with water about to engulf the camera.
The very last photo shows an underwater scene of churned water, sea foam and sand.
Images of the family enjoying a vacation inspired Keeton to search for the family, but with no clue of who they were except for their photos.
“I’m a mother. I know I would want to get the photos back,” she said.
On Jan. 9, Keeton began by posting one photo of the family —all four faces — on every social media site she knew of.
Within three days, it had been shared more than 2,000 times, she said.
Oakland, Calif., television station KTVU took notice and aired a story about the search for the camera’s owner.
A sharp-eyed reporter from the TV station noticed that one of the photos showed a member of the family seated on a camp chair that looked like a Canadian flag, Keeton said.
The story aired Jan. 15. It was picked up internationally and shared thousands of times by Facebook users.
Meanwhile, Fraikin had all but forgotten about the camera.
Fraikin, his wife and two children had been vacationing in LaPush on Sept. 11, 2014, when he set the camera on a rock on First Beach.
“I wanted to catch a picture of the enormous stump, with scale,” Fraikin said.
He set up a remote control to take the photo and posed, but a sudden ocean current known as a sneaker wave washed the camera away.
“I rushed in but it was gone,” Fraikin said.
After spending the afternoon looking for the camera in the flotsam, the family gave up.
He and his family had a ferry reservation to return to Canada the next day, so they took the kids back to camp for dinner and bedtime.
“I figured it would wash up sooner or later,” Fraikin said.
He checked websites for found cameras for a few weeks after the loss, but when it didn’t show up, the family replaced it for Christmas.
On Jan. 16, he was contacted by a former classmate who recognized Fraikin in the online and broadcast photos.
“This shows to me the power of social media. It shows how closely related we are. The link is through only a few friends,” he said.
Fraikin contacted Keeton, they exchanged information — and that night, the photos were electronically transferred to the family.
Keep the camera
He told Keeton to keep the GoPro camera and offered to send her the charging cord for it.
However, Keeton said she searched for the rightful owner because she hopes someone might do the same for her in a similar situation someday.
“We all need to look out for each other and pay it forward,” Keeton said.
The camera will be donated to a Santa Rosa children’s charity, she said.
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Reporter Arwyn Rice can be reached at 360-452-2345, ext. 5070, or at arice@peninsuladailynews.com.
