‘Found on the Guadalupe River': the woman reuniting lost mementoes with owners after Texas floods

The Guardian

2 days ago

A child's lifejacket, a small pink and blue swimming suit top, a delicate pearl and gold chain necklace – these are just some of the items that Dondi Persyn recovered from the Guadalupe River after the devastating floods that recently swept through central Texas.
The flash floods that started over the Fourth of July weekend in Texas have killed at least 135 people – including many children – with authorities still searching for those who are missing. Most of the deaths were reported to have happened along the Guadalupe River in Kerr county.
What started as a one-time act of kindness has now blossomed into a collective effort for Persyn, the 54-year-old grandmother from Boerne. Through her Facebook page, 'Found on the Guadalupe River', she has gathered, restored and returned thousands of items to those affected by the floods, each object a poignant reminder of loss, narrating a tragic tale. Her posts get up to 500,000 views daily.
'I had this feeling that if it were my family, or my children or my grandchildren, I'd probably want something,' Persyn told the Guardian.
'Most of us here are guarded, reverent. There is a quiet softness, and we're holding our whole community that way.'
The tragedy has played out in many ways. It has become a political football. David Richardson, the acting director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema), defended his agency's handling of the floods on Wednesday. After facing accusations that the response to the floods was botched, he called the response a 'model' for how 'disasters should be handled'.
Trump floated the idea of eliminating Fema altogether during his first week in office, a notion repeated by the homeland security secretary, Kristi Noem, in March.
But in affected communities it has also played out far more personally as they have reckoned with the terrible loss of life and emotional trauma.
For Persyn, who rallied quickly in the wake of the disaster, her mobilization was 'way faster than any of the officials'. Living up in the hills, she had been safe from the floods, but went out the next day to help search for people. She was there for 30 minutes before a body was found. Instead, while search operations continued, Persyn started picking up trash bags and collecting the items that had been strung across the river.
'By the end of the day, I was the last collecting personal things, and the next day, I started a Facebook page,' she said. 'Everything happened really quickly, I started putting pictures up and immediately people said 'that's mine'.'
The first reunion was with a teacher who lived about a mile up from where her jewellery was found. She had lost everything in the floods, and Persyn spent hours the night before they met untangling her necklace in preparation, knowing it would mean something.
Another lady was reunited with her totem pole, which had made its way down the river with its feathers intact. Persyn even tracked an Invisalign tooth brace back to the person who lost it. It's not just objects, though; animals have been reunited with their owners. Samson the cat was found alive after two weeks, and it turned out that someone had been feeding him and ensuring he survived.
'I credit that to the internet sleuths,' Persyn laughed. 'It's really fated. I was supposed to be here at this time, and we have to teach other communities to do what we did.'
While there is a sense of hope in the day-to-day findings, which have now expanded from a one-woman business into a warehouse-oriented operation, Persyn detailed the difficulties she and her team have faced when items come in that likely belonged to young girls who were at the Camp Mystic summer camp and whose fate created headlines around the world.
The camp, which offered two four-week terms and one two-week term over the summer, was the go-to summer camp for daughters of Texans for nearly a century. At least 27 campers and counselors were killed.
'Every time we would get something that would come in with a little name on it, we have a special way we treat it; it's all done really privately, not in the public,' Persyn said.
'Early on, we developed a way to get them back to the parents. None of us know how to handle disaster, the rawness of losing a child and returning something that ended up at the bottom of a river.'
A small lavender backpack, pink metallic cowboy boots and a Minnie Mouse toy were just some of the sentimental items parents on the Facebook group were asking the community of searchers to see if they could find.
'At its core, this movement embodies reverence and respect for the tangible keepsakes that have been recovered. These precious mementoes are then returned to those who treasure every fragment of what has been found and the cherished memories they hold,' said Dondi's close friend DeAnna Lindsay, who has been working with her daily since she started out.
'Dondi has ignited a movement that will inspire others to replicate its kindness in their own communities during times of need.'