Former Homeless Woman Who Found Old Family Photo Album Held Onto it and Returned it to Descendants

A woman who found a century-old family photo album in a dumpster while living on the streets later tracked down the family’s descendants.

In a heartwarming story, Melody Edwards hung on to the photo album that she says “seemed important” — despite being in a bad situation when she found it and having no home to store it in.

“So my husband and I, we were we were homeless for quite some time. We were living in our vehicle, and I needed gas money. So I decided to jump in the dumpster and find some recycling,” Edwards tells KRCA 3 of the time she found the Victorian-era photo album.

After holding onto the album for an unspecified amount of time and getting off the streets, Edwards showed it to her best friend, a retired photographer, who told her she should reach out to KRCA 3.

The Sacramento-based TV station contacted a genealogist who set about finding clues such as any writings on the photos, particularly names.

“I can tell you every genealogist, however long they’ve been doing it, have missing pieces of information,” Patty Milich from the Davis Genealogical Society tells KRCA 3. “In the early 20th century, very often immigrants went to studios and had themselves, photographed. The photographs were put on postcards which were sent back to the old country.”

The hunt to find the family involved looking through old photo studios, the California State Library, the University of Nevada, the California census records, the Santa Clara County list of biographies, and finally a 1920 yearbook photo from Stanford University showing a 20-year-old Sumner McGinnis. From there, they tracked down Sumner’s son Jim who had died, and then eventually found his daughter Deborah Anzini.

KRCA 3 tracked down Anzini who was amazed that the photos had come into her possession. “This is completely different than anything. We have all the albums that are completely different. So this is going to be very exciting to take a look at,” she says.

The television station filmed the emotional moment Anzini spoke to Edwards on the phone who told her her poignant story of how she was homeless and jumped into the dumpster in a bid to earn some money from recycling. Anzini is touched that during that difficult period, Edwards deemed the photo album important enough to hold on to and wanted to reunite it with its rightful owner.

“It’s something we call we genealogists call a random act of genealogical kindness that you found it, and especially that you found the descendants to give the book to,” adds Milich from the Davis Genealogical Society.