GRANDVILLE, Mich. -- For Christopher Tyler, it was supposed to be the trip of a lifetime when he finally had the opportunity to be the first in his family to travel to the United Kingdom to trace his ancestral roots.
Tyler, who comes from a family with a Scottish and Irish backgrounds, said he set out to take pictures during his travels to make a gift for his grandparents' upcoming 60th wedding anniversary.
“They never got a chance to go over there, and it was a way for them to live vicariously through me," he said. “I’m the first one in the whole family to have the means to actually go over there and do something like that and find where we came from."
Two weeks ago, after taking hundreds of pictures documenting the journey where he found his family's castle in northern Scotland and his family's crest, Tyler prepared to board his plane home when he realized the his camera were missing.
“I panicked," he said. "I didn’t know if I left it in the rental car or at the hote. I got on my phone and was calling everybody I could to find. This camera that had more than 700 photos of my trip.”
After returning home, Tyler posted an ad for his missing camera on a local Edinburgh, Scotland, site called GumTree, similar to Craigslist, he said. The next day, he was shocked when he received a message. “Somebody emailed me and told me that someone with the a camera matching the description of mine with the exact same memory card and missing the USB port was trying to trade the camera for a lawnmower.
"The gentleman he tried trading the lawnmower with had a phone number for the guy, so I got a hold of some friends on Facebook in the U.K., and they tried writing and calling the man," Tyler said.
Tyler even managed to track down the suspected culprit on Facebook where he messaged him, and Facebook even showed the man had read the message. But, after sending several messages, Tyler has yet to receive a response.
“The fact I actually found the guy is pretty amazing itself potentially," Tyler said. "And that the camera is right there and to be that close and still come up with nothing, it’s bittersweet.”
Tyler's now only has a few dozen lower quality photos he took on his cellphone during the trip, he said.
“I don’t care about the camera, I just need the pictures," he said.
With his hopes fading, Tyler fears the memory card containing all of his pictures has been wiped clean.
"It’s something I’ll never be able to do again in my life, and moments that my grandparents and my entire family were looking forward to seeing and experiencing with me."
"I’d pretty much do anything just to have the chip back, that’s all I need.”
He tried to file a police report with local Edinburgh police, but he was told to file a police report in West Michigan first, Tyler said.
