We’ve seen the images of destruction, debris and flooding left behind from Hurricane Helene. But other images also came out of the storm: family photos – snapshots of happy memories and important milestones – left behind in the mess.
After the deadly hurricane in October, Taylor Schenker, who lives in Canton, North Carolina, nearby hard-hit Asheville, found herself with about 200 family photos that didn’t belong to her.
It started after the storm. Schenker’s house weathered Helene well, but she said her friend’s entire home was destroyed by flooding from the Swannanoa River. At least 220 people across six states died in the hurricane, including over 40 in Buncombe County, which includes Asheville.
Schenker and her friend went for a walk to check out the home, which was one of the many in Asheville that was destroyed.
“We spent about four hours digging through the mud, looking for any belongings of hers we could find, because her house literally just doesn’t exist anymore,” Schenker told CBS News last month. “And during that process, I found about four of five individual photographs and we laid out the photos – along with some clothes and we found an American flag – along the bank, hoping they would be reunited with people.”
Vanessa Graham via Photos from Helene
Schenker said thinking about the photos she left behind kept her up that night. “Just thinking, ‘Here are these little photographs that miraculously made it through all of this and now are sitting here and what if it rains or what if the wind blows and they aren’t able to be reunited with their family,'” she said. “That would be such a shame because they made it through all of this. And I know how special a memory like that can really be for somebody.”
So, Taylor went back the next day to get the photos and ended up finding more. She said it was obvious the photos belonged to multiple families.
“It was [a photo of] a middle school basketball team. It was a photo of a beloved dog. I found a wedding photo of a bride hugging somebody,” she said. “You take photos because you have a moment you want to remember and so, they did all seem just special.”
Realizing how many important family memories she now had in her possession, she started the Photos from Helene Instagram page — a virtual lost-and-found. She hoped people would recognize the photos on her page and word of mouth would help reunite them with their rightful owners.
The Instagram page is filled with school portraits, Christmas cards, images of childhood friends and families on vacation. She even found a photo of Michael Jordan dunking the ball that a local man says his dad snapped years ago.
Schenker took them home, dusted them off and categorized them in folders and bins for safekeeping until they could be returned to their owners.
Schenker said she found about 100 photos herself, but picked up about another 100 from other people who found them, including search and rescue teams. At the time of our interview in late October, she said she had returned about 15% of the photos she has collected. She still adds new photos to Instagram daily.
Each reunion is a heartwarming reminder that what she’s doing is important. “Being able to have that moment where you hand something so special to somebody and then also just give them a hug – because they’ve lost likely their entire home in this situation – it’s such a privilege to have an insight into this moment in their lives through these photographs and be able to give them back to them,” she said.
Schenker mails photos to people who are no longer in the area, but she also hand delivers the ones that belong to families who stayed close by. In one case, a college-aged son found his family’s photos on her Instagram, reached out to Schenker and connected her with his mom.
“We have now found five photos of this one family, of these two sons, and when I met with the mom to reunite the photos, she shared that one of her sons had actually passed,” Schenker said. “And so, when they lost their home, they lost all memory of this child. Which is absolutely devastating in addition to the devastation that has already happened.”
She said she recently went for another so-called photo walk – where she digs through debris to find images – and recognized the woman’s late son in yet another photo.
Becky and Nancy Tate, a mother-daughter duo, also found old family photos through the Instagram page. “It was an extremely strange feeling to just be scrolling on social media and randomly see a picture of me when I was 10 in front of a Christmas tree,” Nancy Tate told CBS News on Instagram. “That’s how I found out about Photos from Helene, a total fluke and scrolling and seeing a picture of me covered in dirt.”
Tate family via Photos from Helene
“A very surreal feeling to know all of your belongings and photos have been lost, and then to realize that some person you’ve never met is trying to help people locate these pictures, just out of the kindness of their heart,” Nancy said. “That truly sums up the Asheville community.”
Nancy tagged her mom in the Instagram comments, saying her mom cried when she saw it. Becky told CBS News she felt a combination of joy and shock – “a time of high adrenaline and disbelief.”
Schenker said that many families who lived in the same neighborhood before the hurricane have recognized other people’s photos on the Photos from Helene Instagram page and helped connect each other to Schenker.
“The process is definitely fulfilling,” she said. “It’s fun to see the moment that a photograph is reunited and to see the people in the comments tagging each other and saying, ‘Hey, is this you?’ or ‘Oh my gosh, you just reminded me of this moment in my life that I had totally forgotten about.'”
She said she chose her Instagram’s name because most of the photos we’ve seen come out of the hurricane show the devastation left behind – but her photos from Helene are happy memories of Asheville and the lives lived there.
“You still can’t go to the grocery store without seeing piles of debris,” she said. “And I think that has definitely made me and others celebrate these wins even bigger. Because you have to in order to get through the day to day now.”