A face in an old photograph is ID’d with help from KHON

Over the weekend, Jess Fernandez’s mom went shopping at Walmart on Keeaumoku. When her mom got home to Makaha, Fernandez helped unpack the groceries. Stuck to the bottom of a box of Otter Pops was an old photo of a smiling girl about to graduate from high school. The sepia-toned studio portrait in a cardboard frame bore a little shining seal that said “Class of 1947.”

Fernandez, 21, took a photo of the photo and posted to Facebook. People love a good mystery, and this one quickly went viral.

“STRANGE STORY OF THE NIGHT!” Fernandez wrote. “We have no idea who she is or where she came from. If she’s yours please come get her, we live in Makaha. This is tripping me out.”

In a matter of hours, the post was shared hundreds of times, and scores of amateur detectives were on the case.

Someone wondered whether the photo had been brought in to Walmart to be scanned or restored. Another person suggested pulling it out of the cardboard frame to see if there was any writing on the back. “I did. It’s blank,” Fernandez replied.

Someone else figured out that the woman would be around 85 or 86 years old now. People suggested putting up posters showing the photo at nursing homes or posting on alumni Facebook pages. And many people suggested Fernandez call Walmart to try to track down the owner. She did, several times, with no luck. She didn’t want to bring the photo back to the store’s lost-and-found. “I’d feel better giving it back to the family.” She did, however, post to the Walmart Facebook page.

Meanwhile, hundreds of people shared the photo through social media and asked every kupuna they knew if they recognized the girl. People dug out yearbooks that belonged to their parents or grandparents and combed every page to find the young woman’s face. Someone even tried facial recognition software. Nothing.

The photograph was marked “Williams Studio, Honolulu,” and Fernandez worked to track down that angle. She found the grandson of the photographer who owned Williams Studio in the 1940s, but he wasn’t able to identify the woman in the picture.

Fernandez is in culinary school and is about to have a baby. She doesn’t have a lot of time on her hands. But she spent her free moments over the past several days trying to figure out how to get the lost picture back to its owner. KHON did a story on the photo, and a woman on Maui recognized it as her mother, Lillian Uchiyama, a Kaimuki ’47 grad who died three years ago. Fernandez was thrilled and relieved, and though she still isn’t sure how the photo got in the Walmart bag, she’s happy she found its home.

“I guess I felt this photo means something to someone. It would to me. And I hope if the roles were reversed, someone would try as hard as possible to get it back to me,” she said.

Reach Lee Cataluna at 529-4315 or lcataluna@staradvertiser.com.