By Jeff Clemetson | Editor

It was a beautifully clear day with excellent visibility when Mark Schulze and his wife Patty Mooney donned their snorkels, fins and masks for a skin dive in La Jolla Cove. But the digital camera they discovered in the clear waters, and the kindness of the couple to return it to its rightful owner, sure did set off a storm of media attention.

“I got so many comments about what remarkable story this was, what a refreshing change from the normal terrible news,” Mooney said. “It was like a little sunshine in people’s lives.”

For San Carlos residents Schulze and Mooney, the story began Aug. 27 when they set out from La Jolla Shores with goal of swimming to the cove area. Because of the “phenomenal” visibility, Schulze spotted something shiny in the sand 25 feet below the surface. He dove and found a Panasonic Lumix digital camera and although he thought it was likely ruined by the ocean, he retrieved it and brought it along. Later that day, when Schulze and Mooney were on their way to a dinner event, Mooney tried turning it on and was surprised to see the camera still functioned.

“When it turned on I was like ‘Wow!’ I was so delighted,” she said.

Scrolling through the 300 pictures that were stored on the camera, the couple discovered a very active family that were probably missing their photographic memories of New Year’s Eve in Yosemite and trips to the San Diego Bay, Palm Springs and Julian dating all the way back to 2011. Mooney began immediately trying to locate the owners through her Facebook page because the locations of the photos found on the camera indicated the family was likely local to San Diego.

“It became our mission to try and find who they were because they looked like a lovely family and they had all these adventures they were on,” she said.

Schulze and Mooney continued to share photos on Facebook, hoping to find someone who recognized the family in the pictures, when a friend suggested they try contacting local television news stations for help. Within hours of the story airing on a local news program, the camera’s owner contacted them.

La Mesa residents Jamie Kern and his wife Alycen Haynesworth had not seen their camera for over a month and a half, but just a handful of days after Schulze and Mooney scooped it from the bottom of the cove, it was back in their hands. It was also the beginning of a wave of media attention that picked up on the feel-good story.

“All the stations, ABC, NBC, CBS, all made sure they were there to cover that and had interviews with us and them,” Schulze said, referring to the reunion of camera and owner that took place at the site where it was lost — the La Jolla Cove. Attempts to reach Kern and Haynesworth by this paper for comment after that day proved fruitless, however when Schulze and Mooney met Haynesworth and her pre-teen son to return the camera, reporters from print and television news were on hand to capture the whole event.

Besides local television, the happy ending for the lost camera story also went viral on Facebook, was picked up by local papers (including this one), was retold over various Internet sites like AOL and was even the focus of a segment on “Inside Edition.”

Schulze and Mooney, who run a video production company called Crystal Pyramid Productions and know a bit about the camera industry, said Panasonic was likely “going gaga” over all the publicity their Lumix camera has received after surviving under water for over a month and a half.

As for Schulze, he has a different take on the attention the story of his good deed is getting.

“The moral of the story is if you find something that doesn’t belong to you, you can spend a little bit of time to try and get it back [to it’s owner], whether it’s a wallet or a camera on the land or a camera in the ocean,” he said. “The reward will be maybe a new friend or if nothing else, you’ll at least get some good karma points.”

—Write to Jeff Clemetson at [email protected].