Lost camera found in Shenandoah River reunited with owners 4 years later

A memory card from a lost action camera made its way back to its original owner thanks to luck and some detective work by a family from Frederick, Maryland.

Pepe Campos and Cassie Hero lost the camera four years ago when it fell into the water during a tubing trip at the Shenandoah River. The couple thought they'd lost the camera and those memories forever.

"It basically just sunk to the bottom and both of us wrote off the camera forever. There was no way we were getting that back, so we thought," Hero said.

But over the Fourth of July holiday, 12-year-old Brock Rhodes stepped on what he thought was a branch in the river while tubing. He picked it up and discovered it was a camera.

"I just felt something hit my leg and I thought it was a stick, but I pulled it up and it was a GoPro," Brock recalled.

Brock's father Stephen turned finding the camera's owner into a game. They called it "Operation: Find Pepe" because the camera had a label on it with the name Pepe.

The camera was broken, but Stephen Rhodes started looking through the videos on the memory card and found out that Pepe was a BASE jumper.

He "Googled" Pepe and BASE jumping and found an Instagram account for Campos and Hero. He tagged them and they coordinated sending the memory card back to the couple, who now lives in San Diego.

In addition to the priceless BASE jumping videos, the memory card also held pictures and video of Campos' first niece just after she was born.

Rhodes says he hopes returning the memory card will teach Brock a lesson about finding something that belongs to someone else. It appears Brock is already learning that lesson.

"It's not always about keeping things, it's more fun giving," Brock Rhodes said.

Campos and Hero are still active BASE jumpers, posting their pictures and videos to their Instagram account Camp.Hero.