Lost camera finds its way home

A camera fished out of the Brule River in September is on its way home. John Kolstad snagged the camera, still in a yellow plastic case, out of the Brule while angling for steelhead trout.

Instead of throwing it in the garbage can, he took it home and eventually got the memory card to work.

The story of his search to find the camera’s owner was originally published in the Daily Telegram on Dec. 2. Two days later, Mary Nietzel of Chetek, Wis., contacted him.

“He put a smile on my face,” Nietzel said. “It made my day, in reality.”

The card holds pictures of her home and dog Breaca as well as a trip down the Brule River with fellow classmates from Northland College.

Kolstad of Superior planned to send the camera, which no longer works, and the memory card, which does, to Nietzel during the holidays.

The Chetek woman lost the camera July 17 while kayaking down the Brule. It was her first trip down the river and her first kayaking experience. The waterway was more of an adventure than she expected. When her kayak took on too much water, Nietzel stopped to dump it out. The unsecured camera floated away in its yellow plastic case.

Nietzel didn’t realize it was gone until she went to take another picture.

“It was devastating,” Nietzel said. She’d had the camera for about four years, and even earned a blue ribbon at the Northern State Fair for a photo that she took with it.

The camera took great pictures and had been through its share of adventures, she said. Nietzel had previously dropped it off a pontoon boat into an Iron River lake, left it out in the rain on the Florida Keys and dropped it into the Everglades.

“I could be a Canon commercial, I think,” she said. But the dive into the Brule was the camera’s last.

Kolstad estimated he found the device about a mile downstream from where it was lost. He tried posting pictures from the memory card on his Facebook page to find the owner, but had no luck.

A gallery of the photos was placed online in conjunction with the Telegram article. A Washburn man who graduated from Northland College looked through them and saw one of his former classmates was pictured. He contacted her and she got in touch with Nietzel. The Chetek woman e-mailed Kolstad, and confirmed the camera was hers.

“It was quite nice of him to fish it out and it was a kind gesture,” Nietzel said. “I guess he’s paying it forward.”

She said she has upgraded to a new Canon camera, with which she’s being very careful.

“I’m avoiding water, at least me taking pictures near water,” Nietzel said. Next time she decides to go close to the water for a shot, Nietzel said, she’ll probably take a disposable underwater camera.

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