Caker Young 2007

Man seeks owner of camera lost at sea since 2007

APTOS -- The mystery began at the end of March, when a man and his young daughter headed over to Hidden Beach in Aptos to see what destruction two days of heavy storms had wrought.

The beach was unrecognizable, with wet pieces of driftwood, gleaming shards of broken glass and old bottles strewn across the dark sand. "Just your typical beach junk," said Aptos resident Peter Govaars.

Then he glanced down at his feet and spied a piece of white plastic. Reaching down, he picked it up and realized it was the skeleton of a digital camera. Surprisingly, its SD photo card was still snugly encased inside its slot, so he took the camera frame home to see if whatever images the card contained could be salvaged.

After coaxing it out of the slot, Govaars took the card apart and spent about 30 minutes wiping off the remaining seawater and sand, then stuck it in his card reader -- and voila.

The card contains 104 pictures, all of them taken over a two-week period in June 2007, meaning the camera likely has been floating around Monterey Bay for four years.

"It really is kind of a neat time capsule, given how it was lost and for how long," he said.

Some of the images feature a young Latina with pigtails and an oval-shaped birthmark on her left cheek. Some show her using a baseball bat to whack the candy and other goodies out of a Snow White pinata, and in others she's blowing out the candles on a birthday cake topped by Minnie Mouse, an elderly couple proudly watching on.

"These might be the last pictures ever taken of grandma and grandpa, here at the party," Govaars commented.

The final photographs document what he believes is a day trip from the San Jose area to Santa Cruz, where the young men, women and children are depicted playing on the beach near the Santa Cruz wharf. The last picture, taken June 11, 2007, is a sideways shot taken of a sea lion swimming between the wooden pilings.

"That one could've been taken before or on its way off the pier," Govaars noted with a laugh.

One person in particular, a young woman with long brown hair and a sprinkling of freckles across her nose and cheeks, is featured prominently in the digital album, and Govaars believes she's the owner of the long-lost camera.

"I'd love to give these pieces back and say, 'Here, after four years in the ocean ...'" he said.

LOOKING FOR OWNER OF LOST CAMERA

Peter Govaars, an Aptos resident who found the camera in late March, believes its owner lives in the San Jose area.

Pan Cake Breakfast Annual event Supports WHS Football | Winthrop ...

And yet another harbinger of the summer season is the annual Father’s Day Pancake Breakfast in the high school cafeteria to support the Winthrop High football team.

Coach Sean Driscoll and his crew of Vikings will be serving up all you can eat pancakes with all the fixin’s this Sunday morning, just as their predecessors have done for almost 50 years.

The Pancake Breakfast is a hugely popular event every year and is the primary fundraiser for the WHS football team, bringing in funds for equipment and other necessities that are sorely needed in this era of reductions and cutbacks  in school budgets, especially for athletics.

We hope all of our readers will stop by with their families and friends for this fun and worthwhile event and support our Viking gridsters.

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p���rs, dripping in olive oil, on a soft, Italian, sesame seed bun) from Scola’s sandwich shop.

As we grew older and our palates changed (and some might say improved), we recall our first salmon dinner at a restaurant on the docks in Seattle and grilled striped bass on Nobadeer Beach on Nantucket with our then-young children.

And yes, we remember sitting at a long table on the Deane Winthrop grounds enjoying strawberry shortcake with Myer and Frances Brill, and before that, as youngsters, having pancakes served to us by Winthrop High football players, all of whom were almost the equivalent of pro players in our young eyes.

Our former long time publisher, Andrew P. Quigley, used to say, “When you look back on your life, no matter what you’ve done or accomplished, the one thing nobody can take away from you is your memories.”

Well, food has given us our share of memories, but it is the association of food with those who no longer are with us that makes those memories so special.

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