OKC teacher on a mission to find owner of photo strip she found inside book

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    Oklahoma City, OK (KOCO) — An Oklahoma City teacher is on a mission to reconnect the past to the present. She’s sharing her story in hopes someone will recognize the people in a photo strip she found in northwest Oklahoma City.

“I found it in a book about a year ago. Actually I think it was July 16 of last year,” Emma Smreker said. “It has just kind of become my mission to reunite people with this photo.”

Smreker found the photo strip inside a book at a store near Northwest 63rd Street and May Avenue.

“It’s so darling.. the silly little faces they’re making and everything,” Smreker said. “I can’t imagine that someone would just willingly give that away in a book without realizing that they’re losing that photo.”

To help find the people in the picture or at least someone who knows them, Smreker turned to the internet. She said she posted about it on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and even so far as a golf Reddit page.

“I was able to zoom in on the logo on his shirt and it is actually the logo of a golf course I believe in California,” Smreker said. “Someone that I spoke to when I contacted that golf course was like, anybody in the world can buy those shirts.”

A year later and still no leads, but Smreker isn’t deterred. The game of lost and found has turned into a passion for the local teacher.

“It started back in February of 2018. It actually started because of a book I got for my birthday and it was a receipt to a cafe in Montreal,” Smreker said.

Pictures, receipts, flowers, leaves and even love letters: all things Smreker has found in books over the years.

“We do these little minute things everyday that I don’t think we realize actually are leaving an impression, and then those books get donated or sold or lost or left behind,” Smreker said.

Smreker said the things she finds and when she finds them is a kind of kismet.

“A few years ago I found a letter I think was written back in ’93 or something. It was a letter to an editor,” she said. “I ended up getting it published in the original newspaper that he had sent that letter to. I wanted to kind of finish its journey.”

An off-beat hobby once kept on the down low is now connecting her to people she said she would have never met.

“You never know what you’re going to find,” Smreker said. “Not only are we leaving behind a little bit of ourselves, we’re leaving kind of a mystery for the next person that finds it.”

Smreker said she believes in her heart that someone out there knows who the people are in the photo strip. So if you recognize them, please reach out to her.

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