Life can deal some devastating blows and sometimes it just doesn't seem fair. Like, one minute you can be happily married to a beautiful woman and the next minute you can be a heartbroken widower.

This is the trial that Dave Lacey had to endure when he lost his wife, Erica. Just days before Dave and Erica got married, Erica was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive form of lymphoma. She passed away in 2011 at the age of 30.

All he had left of his wife after she was buried was the amazing memories they had made together and a few material things that she loved dearly. One of those material things was her camera and the hundreds of photos on it which Dave held on tightly to.

However, another low blow came Dave's way when burglars broke into his home in Santa Ana, CA and stole his Xbox, expensive jewelry, a few electronics and most devastatingly, Erica’s camera.

“It just didn’t seem fair because after all that we went through, to lose those, it was like a punch in the gut,” he told CNN. More than 300 priceless snapshots of Erica and their life together, gone. The camera even had pictures from her funeral. Dave knew he’d never see those photos again.

One year later, an unrelated home burglary took place, and detectives found 20 receipts for items hocked at a local pawn shop, one of which was for a camera.

When police visited the pawn shop, they found said camera, turned it on, and searched through the photos. The more they scrolled through the images, the more they realized this camera held a special meaning — especially when they saw photos from a wedding day and a funeral.

The police had no names to connect the camera to its rightful owner, but recognized a certain brown wall and familiar tree in one of the shots. When they pulled up to the neighborhood where they thought the photo was taken, they found and recognized Dave Lacey.

Since Dave had written off the camera as gone forever, he initially thought it was a joke. But as soon as he spotted the camera’s one-of-a-kind strap, which was handmade by Erica before she passed, he knew.