A Richmond resident made it his mission to return a lost drone he found while in Victoria this past summer.
Albert Leung, a local videographer and photographer, found a broken drone along Mystic Beach in Victoria while he was enjoying the end of a four-day work trip.
He discovered the DJI Mini 3 Pro “full of sand and seawater” along the shoreline and his first thought was to see if he could find the owner.
“I immediately felt like I was in one of Shangerdanger’s diving scavenger videos so I was like I had to return this drone to the owner,” said Leung in a video posted to YouTube.
The Youtuber, who returned home to Richmond the same day, began to look for clues starting with the SD card that was in the drone.
The card, he said, contained video footage of a neighbourhood and decided to seek help from the Hiking of British Columbia Facebook group.
Leung told the Richmond News that several members of the social media group helped identified the neighbourhood in the video and offered to share the post with a Victoria-specific group as well.
“The owner was actually in the (Victoria) group and a couple of contacts later the owner reached out directly to me,” he said.
“I thought it was going to take at least a week or something for someone to reply, but it happened within 24 hours.”
The drone belonged to Victoria resident Andre who had just gotten into videography as a hobby, according to the video.
Eventually, the two met up and the drone was returned.
When asked what made him so compelled to go on his “drone-returning mission,” Leung said it was because he had personally lost something in the past that had sentimental value to him.
A wallet, lost in Hong Kong a couple of years ago, contained a card that reminded him of his childhood. It was something that was “just special” to him and had wished someone would have returned it, but he was not so lucky at the time.
“So when I’m in the opposite position now, I don’t know how important something may be to someone … but I’ll try my best to return it,” said Leung.
He added that an SD card is the most important item to a photographer or a videographer.
“It’s more important than any other piece of gear, like the camera or the case. It’s not something you can buy back with money … because it is like a memory capsule, and if you lose it, you can’t ever get the files back.”
Leung gives his thanks and applause to the online community for stepping up and helping him.
“What can I say, humanity is amazing.”
