Thief Caught In A Flash

Today on the web: The incredible story of a family that caught a thief in the act. The Myers family was just posing for a family photo in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol building. The snapshot captured something else too.

Sometimes, we intend to do one thing, but another thing happens instead: something fortunate we never would have expected. That happened to the Myers family on a visit to Madison, Wisconsin for a wedding. The tech blog Gizmodo featured their amazing story this week.

The Myers family, dressed in their nicest wedding attire, decided to take a family photo in front of the Wisconsin State Capitol building. Mr. Myers put down his bag, found a nice sunny spot in front of the building’s white Corinthian columns, told his wife and kids where to stand, set his camera on a wall and pressed the timer button. He rushed to get into the picture. 3…2…1… Snap! A perfect shot.

Then Mr. Myers went to grab his bag from where he’d left it. But the bag was gone. Inside was his iPad, his cash, his credit cards, keys…

Mr. Myers ran around the building. But he didn’t see anyone with his bag

That’s when Mr. Myers looked at his photo again, zooming in this time:

Sure enough, there was the thief, caught in the act.

He showed the photograph to police officers, who put out an all points bulletin on the suspect. In a few minutes, they found the thief and recovered the stolen bag.

If the family had stood a little to their left, the thief wouldn’t have been photographed. If the timer had been set just a second later, the camera lens might have only caught a blur of the fleeing man. Everything had lined up perfectly to preserve a happy family occasion.

Gizmodo wrote, “they’ve got a Canon G7 camera with quite possibly the best timing in the world.” Yahoo!, which also picked up the story, called it “a happy ending, on the other side of a Kodak moment.”

Here at Guideposts, we call it a Mysterious Ways.

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