Last summer, the Guadalupe River in Texas Hill Country surged from 3 feet to 30 feet in just 45 minutes after torrential rains, sweeping away families, campers, and their cherished possessions. Among the survivors were Elida Sierra Lutz and her three children, who clung to life for three hours before being rescued. They lost everything they had brought camping, including her son’s favorite hoodie, her daughter’s Crocs with custom charms, and their travel trailer.
But a remarkable community effort, spearheaded by Dondi Voigt Persyn of Boerne, Texas, turned loss into hope. Dondi, a perfume maker and mother, began finding scattered items in the aftermath and launched a Facebook group called “FOUND on the Guadalupe River” to reunite objects with their owners. The group quickly grew to nearly 57,000 members, and Dondi set up a warehouse in Ingram to clean, catalog, and store recovered items.
Among the first reunions were five tangled necklaces found by Dondi, which belonged to retired schoolteacher Patty Hyatt. Patty had lost everything in the flood, and the return of her jewelry brought tears and a renewed sense of purpose to the volunteers. The warehouse became a sanctuary where survivors could share their stories and reclaim pieces of their lives—from photographs and clothing to camp artifacts like the 70-year-old Firelighter necklaces from Heart O’ the Hills camp.
As the one-year anniversary approaches, about 1,800 items still await their owners, mostly photographs. Elida has yet to find her son’s wallet or her daughter’s gaming devices, but she holds onto hope. The effort has shown that even in the wake of tragedy, strangers can unite to restore what was lost—one memory at a time.
