Internet caf� owner Adam Nickerson was taking a break outside his Langley, B.C., store earlier this week, when he noticed a guy hawking a digital camera to passersby.
Nickerson said he wouldn't normally have cared, but when he glimpsed some of the camera's images, his curiosity piqued.
"I could tell it was pretty important stuff. There were newborn baby pictures -- the first years of a baby's life," he told ctvbc.ca Friday. "Anyone would hate to lose anything like that."
Nickerson toyed with the idea of calling the police. But he figured they'd take too long to respond.
So he decided to buy the camera.
"It just pissed me off," he said. "If he had sold this to someone, no one is going to give a crap about what's on it. They'll just delete this stuff."
The man -- who Nickerson described as being about 40, "disheveled" and "kinda rundown" -- was selling the camera for $25.
Nickerson offered $15.
The man accepted without hesitation.
Turned out the camera -- a silver Canon PowerShot SD790 IS -- had more than 400 photos, mostly of a couple and a newborn child. The most recent ones were taken Nov. 2.
Nickerson posted a Craigslist ad with a few photos of the couple.
"Can anyone identify these people?" he wrote.
As of Friday afternoon, no one had replied.
Nickerson contacted CTV News to get the word out.
"I have a couple nephews and a niece. If my sister lost her camera with pictures of her babies, she'd just be devastated," he said.
Update:
CTV News reached the camera's owner Friday night. Tune in to CTV News at Six on Saturday to see how the story ends.
