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Wedding Album Lost at LAX Returned to Bay Area Couple

Los Angeles Airport Police officers hand-delivered a lost wedding photo album to a family, July 30, 2015, in Modesto, California

Los Angeles Airport Police officers hand-delivered a lost wedding photo album to a family, July 30, 2015, in Modesto, California

A wedding album that was found at Tom Bradley International Terminal at Los Angeles International Airport Lost and Found and remained unclaimed for nearly a year was returned Fridat to its owners — who are expecting a baby within the week.

An Airport Police Honor Guard hand-delivered the album to the couple at their home in Modesto.

“The family was super grateful,” Airport Police Officer Rob Pedregon told City News Service. “The wife had even gotten up early and prepared them (the officers) a meal.”

Pedregon said the couple are expecting a child in about eight days. Getting their wedding album back “made the couple very happy,” he said.

The album was found Sept. 14, 2014, in the arrivals area of the terminal, Pedregon said.

“Standard protocol for lost items is officers attempt to locate the owners for 97 days,” Pedregon said. “Unclaimed items are then assessed, and are either discarded or auctioned off.”

In this case, however, airport officials kept the item, because they “just couldn’t get rid of something with such sentimental value,” Pedregon said.

The cover of the album had a picture of a man and a woman, with inscriptions that read, “Our Wedding Memories” and “Safiullah Jabar Khil & Halimi.”

Images from the scrapbook were posted on the Facebook page of Los Angeles Airport Police, and on the department’s Twitter page (LAAirportPD). Airport officials reached out to the media earlier this month in hopes of spreading the work about the lost album.

The effort quickly paid off.

Hours after the media blitz, Airport Police were contacted by a person in Northern California who was a friend of the couple and spotted the album on Facebook. The person also contacted the couple and planning began to reunite them with the album.

“On our website, we ended up with 10,000 hits on it” after news of the lost album broke, Pedregon told CNS.

He said it was an example of workers at the airport Lost and Found realizing the value of the album.

“It’s not really worth a lot to us, but to the owner it’s priceless,” he said.

Pedregon said the album was delivered by a contingent of officers who were on their way back to Southern California after attending the Oakland funeral of Hayward police Sgt. Scott Lunger, who was killed during a traffic stop last week.