The phone rang at our studio. On the other end was Brock Cummings, whose family had lost everything in the devastating Paradise fire that affected so many last year. Thankfully, his family was able to relocate to Chico, and are beginning to put their lives back together, Over several years, we photographed each of his three darling children when each was a toddler; and Brock was hoping we could find and replace those treasured portaits. Our storage goes back to the early eighties, so there was a small chance we would still have the negatives. Our filing system is chronological, by job number; but unfortunately all we had to go on was the family’s last name.
We narrowed our search down to approximate time spans. And after two days of searching, we found the negatives, which seemed nothing short of a miracle! Cathy and Leslie burst into tears, so moved we were able to help the Cummings. Next we emailed the family with the great news, the response from Brock is what makes our work truly gratifying.
"GOD BLESS YOU!!!! I cannot express how much we appreciate you and your team working so hard to find our kids!"
Below are a few of the images we were able to recover. We are now in the process of replacing the portraits lost in the fire; and hope in some small way, we have helped this wonderful family continue to heal.
1 Comments
Aug 28, 2020, 11:21:20 PM
Serena Kam - What a STORY!! You took our wedding pictures 38 yrs. ago (tomorrow is our Anniversary!) and we now live in Honolulu. We haven't been able to go to our other home in the Bay Area due to the pandemic and were missing our album you made for us so decided to see if you were still in business. We were so happy to find you again and see your photos are beautiful as ever! This story touched us especially since our 1st born (son) and his family also lost everything in the Paradise fire (and also have relocated to Chico!) Fortunately they are young enough where most of their photos were digital and on the cloud. But what a heart warming story to see how you helped this family heal! It really hits home because it also happened to our family. What a small, small world and God bless you for your kindness and years of good memories! ~Serena and Nathan Kam