Woman Reunites Widow With Late Mother's Wedding Video

When Kristen Vallaire plugged in her Goodwill DVD player on May 12, someone else's wedding started playing on her TV. Most people would have tossed the disc and moved on.

Instead, Vallaire posted the wedding footage to a local Facebook group in Leland, North Carolina, hoping someone would recognize the couple. Within hours, a woman named Ana O'Donnell saw her own face staring back at her.

The DVD player had belonged to O'Donnell's mother, who died last year at 96. After her death, it somehow ended up on a Goodwill shelf with the disc still inside.

O'Donnell's mother had watched that wedding video constantly. It was her way of seeing family members and loved ones she'd lost over the years, all gathered together one more time.

O'Donnell hadn't even realized the video was missing. She assumed it was stored safely somewhere, waiting for when she needed it.

The disc came within one decision of disappearing forever. If Vallaire had simply ejected it and thrown it away, O'Donnell would have eventually looked for the video and never found it.

Sunny's Take

This story captures something beautiful about how communities still show up for each other. Vallaire had zero connection to the people on that screen, but she spent her time tracking them down anyway.

For O'Donnell, getting the video back means more than preserving her mother's memory. She comes from a big Portuguese family and plans to share the footage with her children and grandchildren someday.

Both women told WWAY-TV the experience showed them what social media can do when people use it to help instead of harm. Sometimes a stranger will go to extraordinary lengths for someone they'll never meet.

Vallaire could have watched 30 seconds of someone else's wedding and moved on, but she didn't, and now a daughter gets to keep the last thing her mother loved to watch.