Photo Clues Lead NY Sleuths to Camera’s Owner

Erika Gunderson got into a taxi in New York City right after dank on New Year’s Eve and found herself in a mystery of sorts. A digital age mystery worthy of Nancy Drew or the Hardy Boys, for sitting on the back seat was a nice Canon digital camera.

According to AP, Gunderson asked the driver which previous passenger might have left it, but the cabbie didn’t seem to care. So Gunderson took the camera home and showed it to her fiancé, Brian Ascher. They then decided that the right thing to do was to locate the owner.

The question was how? The only clues as to the owner’s identity were the pictures on the camera. Many were typical tourist snapshots, complete with a visit to the Statue of Liberty. It was going to be a tough job finding a stranger in all the people in those pictures.

Since, Gunderson was busy in finance for Bear Stearns Cos. (BSC), the job of amateur sleuth fell to Ascher, a 26-year-old law student at New York University. According to AP, Ascher was on winter break and eager to put off writing a paper about climate change treaties.

Ascher began his quest by checking to see if anyone had reported the missing camera to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. He was unlucky. He then placed ads in lost-and-found sections of Craigslist but received only one response. The response came from a couple in Brazil who had lost a camera in a cab on Oct. 12, not Dec. 31.

"I guess they thought their camera had been riding around in a taxi for two months," Ascher told AP, smiling knowingly at the idea that such a thing would be possible in New York.

The 350 pictures and two videos on the camera showed several adults, an older woman and three children. Half put them at New York sites like the Empire State Building. The other half had the group enjoying warm weather and frolicking at kid-friendly theme parks.

Easily, Ascher pinpointed Florida. The group had stood in front of a sign indicating Clearwater, Fla., and then posed at Bob Heilman’s Beachcomber Restaurant there, AP reports. The group also took a pirate-themed boat ride where the kids got mustaches painted on their faces. When Ascher zoomed in on the group to see name tags on their shirts, he spotted an Alan, an Eileen, a male Noel and a female Noelle, plus a Ciarnan. Under their names was written "IRE."

Next, Ascher checked the videos; he saw nothing that would reveal any clues about their identities. But, while the children were dancing and swimming, he heard Irish accents, in the background. Bingo, Ascher figured, the camera’s owner is from Ireland. Next, Ascher called Canon’s Ireland division to see if anyone had registered the $500 camera’s serial number. Again, there was no luck. He then posted ads on Irish Web sites. Again, no luck.

Not wanting to give up, he checked the date stamp on the photos taken at Bob Heilman’s eatery and called to inquire whether anyone remembered serving a big Irish group that day. Without the diners’ last names, there was no way to check. The manager told Ascher. It’s a nice thing you’re trying, he added, but you probably just found yourself a new camera.

Ascher then recruited his mother, Nancy, and sister, Emily Rann. The women scoured the pictures for clues he might have missed. Nancy was particularly confident, having reunited people with their lost belongings before. Once, she found a California woman’s wallet in a cab in Florence, Italy, and spent all day on her trail before making a handover at an American Express office.

"I thought, with all this data in the camera, there’s no way we’re not going to get it back to them," Nancy Ascher told AP. "I was hoping it wasn’t going to take a trip to Ireland, flashing their pictures everywhere."

It was then; Ascher’s mother and his sister noticed that one of the pictures showed a doorman helping someone into a New York taxi. They zoomed tight on the doorman’s uniform and made out the logo of the Radisson Hotel.

AP reports that after several phone calls and a visit to the hotel to show the pictures around, Nancy Ascher persuaded an employee to search the Radisson’s guest records by first name and country of residence. Finally, a hit, a Noel from Ireland had stayed there on the date stamped on the photo. Then, Nancy Ascher charmed the hotel employee into sharing the guest’s e-mail address. Wow, they were finally on the right track. Then the response came. When Noel responded to Brian Ascher, he said he hadn’t lost a camera.

By this time, school was resuming, Ascher though unwilling to give up, was prepared to give the camera to his mom so she could take over. After all, she had figured out the name of the Florida pirate-boat cruise and was trying to reach its operator. Before doing so, Ascher took a final look at the photographs.

He mulled over some from Dec. 30 that didn’t include the children. The photos showed signs for bars in Manhattan’s East Village: The Thirsty Scholar, Telephone Bar, and Burp Castle. There also were multiple interior shots of a tavern. The pictures of the tavern did not seem to fit with what Ascher knew of those other three bars.

Another picture caught his eye, this one showed two people outside an apartment building. Almost like if it was accidentally included in the picture was something Ascher had missed the first time: an awning in the background that read "Standings." Eureka! “Standings” is a bar next to Burp Castle. Ascher checked its Web site, and the interior matched the pictures on the camera, AP reports.

Ascher then contacted the Standings’ owner, who reached the bartender who had worked Dec. 30. Yes, he recalled an Irish group. Especially because one of the women was a big tipper who said she worked at another New York City bar, Playwrights. The Standings bartender called Playwrights to ask which employees had been in his bar, AP reports.

It was not too long after that phone call that Ascher received an e-mail from a woman named Sarah Casey, whose sister Jeanette works at Playwrights. Suddenly everything Ascher had seen on the camera became real life.

According to AP, the Caseys recently had hosted relatives and friends from Ireland. The group included their friend Alan Murphy, who had journeyed to Florida with family before heading to New York, where the clan stayed at the Radisson. (Apparently, their Noel was not the Noel whom Ascher e-mailed.) Murphy ended the trip despondent for leaving his camera in a cab in the twilight on New Year’s Eve. Next when Sarah Casey agreed to send it to him. The camera did not go to Ireland but instead to Sydney, Australia, where Murphy lives now.

Murphy, an insurance underwriter, had been devastated to lose the pictures from a trip he had planned for years, AP reports. It was Jan. 10 – his 34th birthday – when he heard he would be getting the photos back. "I was over the moon," he told AP. "Best present ever."

"I owe you one," he said in an email to Ascher. "It’s good to know there are some honest people left in the world."