Taylor Schenker has found hundreds of family photos that had been swept away during the historic flooding of the Swannanoa River during Hurricane Helen.
CANTON, N.C. — In the weeks after the devastation left behind in western North Carolina from Hurricane Helene, a chance encounter between a woman and a photo of a dog has led to a community-wide effort to reunite families with memories washed away in the deadly floods.
Taylor Schenker was meeting her friend for a FEMA appointment to get assistance in the wake of the disaster that left 230 killed and nearly entire towns in ruins. Her friend’s home was destroyed by the Swannanoa River, which left widespread destruction along the banks where the waters crested well above previous record levels.
“While I was waiting for the appointment, I found a photo of a dog on the riverbank, and we ended up looking for photos after that for a few hours and found some different materials and different belongings for people that we wanted to reunite,” Schenker said. “And we laid them out on the riverbank and just went home that day.”
But she said the thoughts of what the photos had been through kept her up that night.
“And it felt so devastating for them to have made it through all of this and not make their way home,” she said. “So I went back the next day, gathered up the photos and started (an) Instagram account, and that’s where we went from there.”
Scheneker’s Instagram page is called “Photos from Helene,” where she is posting what she’s found in the hopes of reuniting them with their owner.
‘There were a lot of hugs’
Schenker says so far, she’s recovered about 400 photos from along the river banks, from her own finds and working with search and rescue crews and collecting from others who have found photos in the debris.
“It’s just a privilege to have these really intimate memories and to find them along the river banks. I know how much that can mean for somebody who’s lost so much,” she said. “And so I feel really just lucky to be able to be part of these photos’ lives and to be able to reunite them.”
Especially for photos that contain irreplaceable memories.
“For some people, maybe they’ve lost their child or had a memory like a wedding or something like that you just can’t get back,” she said. “And so it’s really special to reunite them with these photos. Just provide a little bit of something for people who have lost so much already.”
She recounted one particularly moving encounter when she found and returned photos to a mother who had two sons, one of whom passed away a few years ago.
“And so when they lost their home, they lost virtually all memory that this child existed,” she said. “And so for them to be able to get a photo back and have that memory of their son was just so special…. There were a lot of hugs.”
She’s found one photo that she reunited with a family who actually lost the person who was in the home when the swollen river struck.
“And I know that’s not the same as bringing their child back,” Schenker said. “But for them to be able to have this when they couldn’t go back to their child’s apartment or anything like that is just a little piece that hopefully helps them in their healing process.”
About 200 photos have been returned across dozens of families so far, she said.