The internet detectives prevail once again.
It all began when Reddit user ashinn found a beat up GoPro camera that had washed ashore in Huntington Beach, Calif. The camera was so rusted and in such poor condition, he had to tear it apart in order to retrieve the SD card, which stores the camera's files.

Image: @ashinn on Instagram

Luckily, the card was still readable, and although there were only 16 files on it, ashinn uploaded them to Dropbox, and posted to the subreddit r/WhatsInThisThing, with the title "I found a GoPro washed up on the beach yesterday. Here are the files. How did it get there?"
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Reddit's internet detectives quickly went to work, and user PhoenixVA noticed that some of the photos were from the Washington, D.C area, and among the videos on the camera, there was an orange cat named Toby.
Digging deeper, user imacgyv0r put the two pieces of information together, and Googled " 'cat toby' washington dc," which brought him to a Nikon forum, where he found this picture of a cat named Toby.
In the Nikon forum, imacgyv0r was able to determine the cat owner's Facebook and LinkedIn profiles, and from there, his email address was easily acquired. Ashinn sent the man an email, and received this reply.
"How interesting! Yes, it appears to be my GoPro. I bought it a while back (just before the 2 was replaced by the original 3, I think), tested it out a few times, but then it sat for a while. My fiance's oldest son was really interested in them and I decided to send mine to him to let him use it and see what he'd capture with it. He took it on a surfing trip at Huntington with friends but it was stolen during the course of the day. What happened to it between then and your discovery of it I can only speculate.
How long ago did you find it? I read through the Reddit thread and it was interesting to see all the clues come together. Would it be possible for you to mail it to me?"
Judging by the picture, and the accounts given, the camera had been under water and in the elements for a significant amount of time, and although the GoPro was battered, broken, and unusable, the internet was able to return it to the rightful owner.
This isn't the first time a GoPro has been lost and found. Just last week a camera was found in a pig pen, months after a skydiver accidentally dropped it from a plane.

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