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Facebook Reconnects Tornado Victims With Photos

LINDA WERTHEIMER, Host:

NPR's Zoe Chace looks at three of them.

ZOE CHACE: Here's the thing about your pictures on Facebook. They're usually recent from as long as Facebook's been around. And if there's a life-changing storm, your pictures are still on Facebook. But the photos from before Facebook are gone. Scattered all over the state.

MINDA ROBINSON: Minda Robinson and a picture was found at my husband's place of employment in Leesburg, Alabama.

MATTHEW HUBBARD: My name is Matthew Hubbard. I'm from Flatrock, Alabama.

JULIE JEAN: Julie Jean in Kelso, Tennessee.

CHACE: They all found pictures on the ground outside and each one looks like it was taken way before the internet.

ROBINSON: Every mother has a picture of her naked child in the bathtub, that is just like the classic mom's photo for when they get older to bribe them with. I mean that's just all there is to it.

HUBBARD: The photo is of a little boy. He is standing on the Brooklyn Bridge in New York and he's happy and smiling, the sun's in his face.

JEAN: It had Hackleberry High at the bottom of it, dated 1949, and then on the back, her name was Dale Lolly(ph).

CHACE: They put the pictures up on Facebook and waited to hear. Matthew Hubbard got an email.

HUBBARD: Zoe Chace, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.

Zoe Chace explains the mysteries of the global economy for NPR's Planet Money. As a reporter for the team, Chace knows how to find compelling stories in unlikely places, including a lollipop factory in Ohio struggling to stay open, a pasta plant in Italy where everyone calls in sick, and a recording studio in New York mixing Rihanna's next hit.