KATY, Texas — About two months ago, a group of diners left something behind after they finished eating at a Katy pizza restaurant.
Something priceless.
Imagine losing hundreds of your family’s photographs, spanning generations, with no idea where they could have gone.
KHOU 11 News is helping them find the person who could be in this situation.
Safely stored on a shelf beneath the front counter of the Star Pizza restaurant in Katy is a family photo album that has been hidden for the past two months.
Mario Miranda, the restaurant owner, said he’s been living with the mystery since one late night back in April.
"Some family came in to dine in for a long time, talking, and they were having a good time," Miranda said. "It was like they hadn’t seen some of them for a long time. Like a reunion."
Miranda said there were about six or seven people in the group.
"They were looking at the album here," Miranda said while pointing to a table in the dining area. Miranda said the group must have lost track of time, talking and eating, and pouring over the pages of the album until the restaurant closed.
"They just went outside and they stayed there for a while also," Miranda said.
But eventually, the group dispersed, going their own separate ways off into the night.
A waiter went outside to clean off the group’s table.
"He found out that the guys left the album on one of the chairs," Miranda said. "I said, 'Well, let me put it here, they might come back to get it and pick it up tomorrow, maybe.'"
But nobody came back the next day, or the day after that, or the day after that. Pretty soon, the photo album was forgotten once again.
"We just found out yesterday that the album was still here," Miranda said.
Mario and his wife decided to get proactive, posting the story of the lost album with some of its pictures this week to Reddit and Facebook. That’s where KHOU found the story, so we went to the pizza place to see if we could help.
"Man, those pictures are like in movies," Miranda said as he looked through the pages of the family album. The contents of the album are exactly what you’d expect.
"This guy must now be like 70-something,” Miranda said while pointing to a photograph of a young man.
Page after page, there were photographs of strangers just doing normal stuff. Pictures of people nobody in the restaurant on Westheimer has known. But to someone, somewhere, these are the ones with whom they once shared so much love; so much life.
So many memories.
The birth of a baby boy.
The start of a new school year.
That time when it snowed.
An unexpected death.
Graduation day.
A formal.
Young love.
Because the faces in the photographs are unfamiliar, these moments glued to the pages of the album aren’t a big deal to most of us. But to somebody, they most certainly mean the world.
"Now that you are doing this, hopefully, they can see it and come and get it," Miranda said.
There are only a few names scribbled on the backs of some of the pictures in the book and there are a couple of names on a few certificates of achievement inside the book. Bobby Morris is one of the names. Irwin and Reba Morris are two other names. It's believed some of the family members may have lived in Waco at some point.
Some of the pictures and documents were taken or produced in Tripoli, Libya, in the 1950s or 1960s.
If you think you know the owner of the album, send KHOU 11 an email to newstips@khou.com.