“You can’t replace memories”: Volunteers seek to return personal items after Texas floods

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Crystal Smith was sifting through the debris on her property after the July 4 flooding in Kerrville when she came across a handmade Christmas ornament in the shape of a wooden house. On the back, it said “To: Paul and Trey. From: Bill and Rose. Dec. 1996.”

She had no idea who it belonged to, but she knew it had sentimental value, so she held onto it. She and her husband, Ty Smith, who own Billy Gene's Restaurant in Kerrville, also found a child’s rocking chair and a handmade stuffed animal.

They decided to post photos of the items on Facebook, hoping the owners could be found. The Christmas ornament and rocking chair have been reunited with their owners.

Smith said that she still doesn’t know who the stuffed animal belongs to but she knows it could belong to a child who didn’t survive the flood, and returning it to a family could mean “providing them with a little bit of hope and memory and love.”

Since the deadly July 4 weekend floods struck the Hill Country and other parts of Central Texas, social media posts with photos of lost items have popped up online, often created by volunteers helping with search and rescue efforts. The floods left more than 130 people dead and roughly 100 still missing, setting off a massive search for the flood victims.

In the process, many volunteers have found personal items like stuffed animals, photographs, pins, and other items that they are determined to reunite with their owners.

Danny McDonald is an attorney in Boerne whose parents live in Kerrville. His parents were on higher ground, so they’re safe, but the floods still hit close to home. When he found out a group of his friends were going to help search for bodies, he decided to join too.

McDonald said he’s floated on the Guadalupe River countless times and has never seen it in such a state.

“There were two to three hundred-year-old trees broken like toothpicks,” he said, and “giant pieces of RV stuck in trees 20 feet above your head.”

He said it was “surreal” to see children’s stuff scattered everywhere: Goggles, swimsuits, sleeping bags. He came across what he thought looked like a teddy bear, sinking into the mud and staring up at him. He decided to hold onto it and later realized it was a stuffed giraffe.

“Of all the things we were finding, that just stuck out to me, because that's something that would be a comfort item that a kid would bring to camp,” McDonald said. It reminded him of his own childhood stuffed animal, Oscar the Grouch, which he gave to his now 14-year-old daughter, who still has it.

On the way back to the truck, McDonald came across another stuffed animal. A leopard print seal was perched against a tree. He brought both of them home and gave them a deep clean. His wife posted photos of the two stuffed animals on Facebook and the post soon went viral.

Michael Guyer III is also from Boerne and volunteered for search efforts most of last week. What drove him, he said, was seeing the death toll rise and realizing just how bad the situation was.

“It also hits a little bit different when it’s 30 minutes away from you,” he said.

He described wading through waist-high water with his feet soaking wet, carrying a saw and a hatchet, trying to find flood victims in the rough terrain along the Guadalupe River.

During the search, he found some old photographs and took them home.

“And I [am] just thinking to myself, these are people's memories that they had and that were swept away in the river,” Guyer said.

He didn’t know whether the people who owned the photos were still alive. This could be all that’s left, he thought.

“You could replace a toy,” he said. “You can't replace memories, so you can't replace someone's picture.”

He also found items from the Heart O' the Hills Camp while searching in Center Point, 26 miles downriver from the camp. Earlier this week, he was able to return a photo to a family. In the next few days, he will return some of the photos and belongings he found to Heart O’ The Hills Camp family members.

“I really just want to find closure for some of these families,” Guyer said.

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