AUCKLAND, New Zealand – A volunteer with Found on the Guadalupe River went to great lengths to return items belonging to a young girl impacted by the Hill Country Floods.
Teri Hauger said she and her team discovered a purple suitcase belonging to a girl who was working as a camp counselor at Heart O’ The Hills.
The camp was on break on July 4, so the counselor was not at Heart O’ The Hills, but some of her possessions were at the camp and swept away in the river.
Hauger and the organization cleaned the items found and tracked down the owner: a girl named Jenny from Melbourne, Australia.
It was going to cost at least $1,800 to ship the items, Hauger said, but she coincidentally already had plans to visit New Zealand.
“I just called Jenny and explained who we were; she wasn’t even aware of our organization," Hauger said, “and I asked: Is there a possibility she knew anybody in New Zealand that could get, or that she could get from New Zealand? I said, I know it’s a different country, but it’s at least that part of the world.”
Luckily, Jenny had family friends in Auckland, New Zealand.
Hauger returned the suitcase to her family friends, and it is currently en route back to Jenny in Australia.
Hauger and her friend, Dondi Persyn, have been working with a team at a warehouse in the Hill Country to collect, sort, clean and reunite belongings to flood victims since July 4.
“For the ones that come into the warehouse that have lost, whether it be possessions or possessions and loved ones, you can just see what it means to them to have something. Some memento of their former life,” Hauger said. “It is material things, but to them, there’s memories attached to those material things."
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