SAN ANTONIO – Dondi Persyn has made thousands of reconnections over the last two months.
She created the Facebook group Found on the Guadalupe River, which now serves as a social media clearinghouse where people post what they’ve found after the Fourth of July flood in an effort to find the item’s rightful owner.
With a new month came a new challenge for Persyn and her team. She said she was messaging a mother of a Camp Mystic camper about tracking down a lost possession. Suddenly, her activity of the page stopped.
“It immediately came back and said, ‘Dondi doesn’t follow rules,’” Persyn said. “And I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I’ve been hacked.’”
Access to all of the administrators of the page — Persyn’s entire team that sorts, cleans and reconnects lost belongings — was denied.
In response, members of the Facebook group, which total more than 57,000, and members of the media whom Persyn has met since the floods, helped get Facebook’s attention.
“I think all the members were reaching out to Facebook asking what happened to their group because that’s a lot of people that are relying on the service that we’re providing, and we were just gone,” Persyn said. “We just disappeared. So, I think that’s how we were able to get the word out so quickly."
After continuous attempts to access the page, Persyn regained access after a few days.
Persyn said some on social media have been critical in her ongoing effort to reunite survivors and victims’ families with their possessions.
“It’s thousands of connections. It’s not one,” Persyn said. “It’s just Deanna and I, you know, kind of administering it or me, even, that had the idea for it. Or Terry, who’s here cleaning it all up. It’s all of the people — all of working parts — so I can’t even express how important it is to our community right now and how much our community is using it for healing."
Persyn said items are still coming in daily as search and rescue groups, or even just individuals, find belongings along the river and send them her way.
It’s all stored in a warehouse in Ingram, where Persyn and her team make that social media connection, clean the items and ship them out to where they belong.
“I’m shipping to Ann Arbor today,” she said. “I’ve shipped to Colorado. All over.”
Persyn expects to re-evaluate her team’s effort 90 days out from the flood.
Meanwhile, things found along the Guadalupe River continue to come her way.
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