Social media has helped reunite a grieving woman with a cherished memory of her boyfriend, who was lost in last week’s deadly Oakland warehouse fire.
Griffin Madden, 23, of Berkeley, was one of 36 people killed a week ago when a fire broke out in the Ghost Ship warehouse in Oakland, California, during an electronic music show. Two days after the tragedy, his girlfriend, Saya Tomioka, wrote a post pleading for a "Facebook miracle."
Tomioka said she wanted to find the photographer who snapped a picture of the couple kissing in Times Square last June, when Tomioka was visiting the landmark for the first time.
“I never got his name, and he just simply showed us the single beautiful snap shot that he was able to capture,” she wrote. “I’ve always longed to find this particular photograph and thank the photographer. Friends, possibly with your help, I can be reunited with this photograph, this treasured memory that I'll always keep in my heart.”
Facebook users came through for her.
ABC 7 News in San Francisco reported that the photographer, Arken Avan, saw Tomioka's post and sent her the images he took of her and Madden kissing in Times Square.
Avan posted on his own Facebook page that, although he wasn't sure if he was the photographer in question, he pulled up his archives to check. Sorting through more than 200,000 photos in his "street archive," he found the image Tomioka was talking about.
“Luckily, I found their beautiful image and was so happy I found it and photographed their beautiful moment, but very, very sad this fire happened, which took more than 30 lives,” Avan wrote.
Tomioka wrote another Facebook post Thursday to say that she is at peace.
"I loved you openly and endlessly from the moment I laid my eyes on you on my first day at (the University of California at) Berkeley as a freshman. I have no regrets, no question that you ever doubted my love for you," she wrote.
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