"Who Does This?:" Stranger gives Colorado woman unexpected gift
David Awamleh never quite unpacked from one of his numerous moves, but it's a good thing he finally did. He had moved out of a rental home in Bellingham, Washington in 2005, with movers packing up his belongings, which sat in storage for 17 years.
He finally decided to unpack all those boxes, furniture and mementos this past September. And in the stockpile of belongings, he found an old suitcase that movers had packed and it felt oddly heavy.
"I never looked at it," said Awamleh, who now lives in central California. 'I thought it might have my old baseball cards in it," he said.
But when he unzipped the old suitcase two months ago, it was actually packed with hundreds of photos and slides the movers had found in the home and packed up.
"I was just perplexed," said Awamleh, a baseball coach and business consultant. "There was a picture in there of a family from 1896. I just knew that was not my family," he said.
Awamleh began looking through the family pictures and newspaper clippings but had no idea who the family was. "They must mean a lot to somebody", he said of the pictures, "I have to take the time to figure out who they belong to."
Easier said than done.
Some of the pictures had names scrawled on the back. Jonathan, Willie Gray, and Betty Lynn were written on the back of a photo of a group of children.
Awamleh got to work, spending an estimated two to three hours a day for the better part of a week, doing internet searches, trying to figure out who the stash of photos belonged to. He wasn't prepared for what he learned.
An old newspaper clipping contained the last name "Mahaffey," which he combined with Betty Lynn. Bingo. There was a Betty Lynn Mahaffey in Manitou Springs, Colorado.
He connected with a relative of Betty Lynn's and sent them a cellphone shot of some of the pictures that were in the suitcase.
She said "yes," the pictures were of Betty Lynn's family.
"And I was like, 'Let's go!'," Awamleh exclaimed.
But then the relative told him Betty Lynn was living with ALS, an incurable and fatal disease.
"I'm sending them tomorrow, and I'm sending them fast," Awamleh said. "I had no idea she was ill."
He overnighted the pictures to Colorado. As it turns out, Betty Lynn's family had owned the home in Bellingham decades ago. But when they sold it and moved out, hundreds of family photos had been left behind.
The irreplaceable pictures of aunts and uncles, assorted family members, and of Betty Lynn and her siblings as children, have brought immense joy to Betty Lynn, who just turned 70.
"I may have known they existed," she said, "but I wouldn't have a clue where." She said one of her favorites is a picture of her riding a horse when she was nine or 10 years old.
"It's awesome, I'm so happy to have them," Betty Lynn said. "Somebody else would have thrown them away, but you [David] took all the trouble," Betty Lynn's wife, Lyn Boudreau, said, "Where Betty Lynn is right now, this couldn't have come at a better time. It means everything."
From his home in Carmel, California, Awamleh said, "I would hope someone would do it for me. It's the right thing to do. They didn't belong to me, they needed to get to their rightful owner, and they did."
As ALS slowly robs her of her strength, Betty Lynn said the gift from a stranger is really so much more than just old pictures. "I thought it was like all my relatives and their loved ones coming to tell me, from heaven, wherever that is, that it's okay, it'll be okay. We'll all be together and safe."
Awamleh said he's happy with what the pictures mean to Betty Lynn. "It's the right thing to do," Awamleh said. "Always do the right thing and just go out of your way to be kind to people as often as you can."
