Chorley man who lost pen drive 13 years ago with treasured family pictures on it finds out where it had been the whole time

After more than a decade without the treasured keepsake pictures Mark Todd who lived beside Bluebell Woods at the time had given up all hope of ever finding them until a chance message in a Facebook group helped reunite him with his ‘old’ photos. The chance message which helped Mark venture down memory lane was from a man called Chris Collings who now lives next door to where Mark used to live and who had found the pen drive in the woods at the back of his house while out for a walk.

Aerospace engineer Chris Collings, 35, who found the pen drive and put an ad on Facebook group The Leyland Hub in the hope of locating the owner, told the Post: “It was all rusty when I found itbut luckily the USB stick had a cap on the end which had preserved it and when I cleaned it up there were thousands of pictures on it.

“I put an ad last month on the Facebook group saying I had found a pen drive full of family photos from about 2009 and did anyone recognise who the people in the photo were. Mark came forward saying it was him and joked when he had hair and we arranged to meet at St Mary’s Community Centre but he ended up coming round to my house instead and he said it was like a blast from the past. He was shocked and offered me a reward but I said no. I am just glad I was able to help.”

"It’s great to get photos back”

Elated at revisiting memory lane Mark added: “I must have dropped the pen drive in the woods behind out house 13 years ago and then moved. It’s great to get the photos back. Such a small world. I still meet up with one of my neighbours from Bluebell Wood and bumped into another at Lanzarote Airport in 2018!”