Things lost are found in photo salvage work

FORT COLLINS – Diana McKinney carefully cuts open a plastic sleeve holding a sopping wet family photo.

The photo was one of hundreds from several albums that succumbed to the flood in a Longmont family’s basement.

But just a week after flooding wracked Northern Colorado, the photos were being preserved by McKinney, a volunteer at Leave a Legacy in Fort Collins.

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After the flooding, “I thought, what can I do to help,” McKinney said. “Homes are replaceable. Family photos are not.”

McKinney and other volunteers along the Front Range have been busy preserving everything from wedding to graduation photos and digital video tapes tainted by mud and sewage following the flood. They are working as part of the Memory Preservation Coalition, a group of businesses along the Front Range who have joined to offer some of these rescue services for free.

The nonprofit group hopes that as people sort through their flooded homes and find old photos, videos and slides sodden and buried in mud, they will not toss them in the trash. Wet and dirty photos often can be salvaged, according to the nonprofit.

Gordon Nuttall, CEO of Couragent in Fort Collins, co-founded the nonprofit earlier this year. The businesses have recruited volunteers from local historical and preservation societies to save people’s photo and video collections.

“This whole idea of preserving your memories is really important,” Nuttall said.

Nuttall’s company makes mobile scanners that people used last year to save photos that washed ashore after Hurricane Sandy. People used the device to scan the lost photos, digitize them and post on social media for identification.

At Leave A Legacy in Fort Collins last week, volunteers were using the same scanners after cleaning and drying hundreds of waterlogged photos.

“I’m sure we could use more volunteers,” McKinney said.

These businesses are participating in the effort:

• Leave A Legacy in Fort Collins, 1827 E. Harmony Road, (970) 226-0102.

• Leave A Legacy in Denver, 487 S. Broadway, Suite 100, (303) 623-0607.

• Memories to Digital in Boulder, 2525 Arapahoe Ave., 303-554-7100.

• Memories to Digital in Lone Tree, 8481 S. Yosemite St., 303-799-1677.

If flood survivors can’t travel to a Memory Rescue Center, they can call for advice over the phone. For more information, visit MemoryPreservationCoalition.org.