Airline to fly woman to Taiwan to fetch lost camera

Ben Mutzabaugh | USATODAY

China Airlines says it will pay for a Georgia woman to fly to Taiwan to be reunited with a photo-laden camera she lost on a 2007 vacation.

The camera belongs to Lindsay Scallan, who says she lost the waterproof digital camera during a nighttime scuba-diving trip in 2007.

"It was my first time in Hawaii ever, so I was pretty upset I had lost all my memories," she tells Atlanta's WSB-TV.

But Scallan's camera finally washed ashore this month, nearly six years after she lost it. And in Taiwan, about 6,000 miles from Hawaii.

It was on a Taiwan beach where a manager of Taiwan-based China Airlines found it while vacationing with his family.

The camera was covered in seaweed and barnacles, but its waterproof casing was still intact, according WSB.

"An employee of China Airlines found my camera, found the pictures still on the memory card and got in touch with Hawaiian officials to see if they could help find who the owner was — the mystery blond woman as they called it," Scallan says to CBS Atlanta 46.

The Taipei Times reports that Scallan's photos included a shot of a catamaran called Teralani 3, which the China Airlines employee tracked to Maui. That's how the employee — identified by the Times as Douglas Cheng — got the idea to get in touch with Hawaiian officials.

China Airlines created a Facebook page that showed a picture of "the mystery blond woman" along with a page title saying: "China Airlines Is Looking For You."

The Times writes Cheng "contacted Hawaiian authorities and the tourism bureau through (the airline's) Honolulu office … ."

Eventually, the story made it to local Hawaii TV stations, with a report aired via the local Hawaii News Now TV platform.

Hawaii News Now says "the mystery unraveled" after it aired a report on Friday that then "went viral."

"Facebook fans shared, and shared — thousands of times. A high school friend of Lindsay Scallan's saw our story, and pointed us to her Facebook page Sunday morning. She calls it unbelievable," Hawaii News Now says in its report.

Next up for Scallan: An all-expensive paid vacation to Taiwan, where she will meet Cheng and be reunited with her camera.

"China Airlines has offered to pay for me to go out there and my room, board and my food and everything," Scallan tells CBS Atlanta. "An all expenses paid trip to come out there and get my camera back and meet the guy that found it. It's been a wild ride."

"Everyone's talking about it. It's pretty neat," she adds to Hawaii News Now.