The items range from the everyday to the extraordinary.

Pieces of jewelry and children’s toys. Blankets and photographs, fine china, trophies and plaques. Keychains and stuffed animals. Clothes and dolls. A church pew. A canoe.

Some were found miles from home after being carried away by the Guadalupe River flood. They’re the remnants of homes, cars, cabins, trailers and campsites. They’re also pieces of people’s lives, family heirlooms that in some cases hold generations of memories.

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But thanks to volunteers and social media sleuths, families are being reunited with their possessions after the river flooded on July 4, killing at least 135 people. A Facebook group is connecting people who have found things along the river with flood victims searching for pieces of their lives. Several new items are added each day, even weeks after the flood.

Some items have been cleaned of the mud and dirt that soiled them. Others won’t ever look the same after being washed away, buried and submerged, reemerging days or weeks later.

Here are some of their stories.

‘The lady picking up personal effects’

Dondi Voigt Persyn of Boerne, Texas, wanted to help in the flood’s immediate aftermath. So she joined other volunteers in the recovery along the Guadalupe River. The first days were “overwhelming,” she said. “There were still children missing, people missing.

“I decided, let’s let the professionals do their job, so I started collecting trash and personal effects. By the end of the day, I was the lady picking up people’s personal effects.”

But the volume of debris was so great, and Persyn knew many of the items she and fellow volunteers found meant something to people who had already lost so much. Along with some friends, she now administers Found on the Guadalupe River, a Facebook group with more than 47,000 members who share photos, information and tips about items found during cleanup and recovery. The group grew “exponentially” within days, she said.

“It was shocking how organized and effective we were able to be in such a short time,” she said. Fellow administrator DeAnna Kaye Lindsay and Persyn “have been friends for 40 years, and our experience in life prepared us for this moment,” said Persyn, who added she has volunteered in various capacities and for a variety of organizations throughout her adult life.

“Being grandmothers, we wanted to handle everything the way we would for our own children and grandchildren,” she said. So their “heart-driven” mission includes working with families and local agencies to verify ownership and make sure recovered items go to the rightful owners.

A timeline: Hour by hour, how deadly flooding struck Texas Hill Country

She recalled returning a life vest to a man who saw a photo of it on the Facebook group. “He just needed one thing,” she said. “It was a connection to the past, his life before.”

A retired teacher lost her trailer and everything in it, but she and her grandson were both able to get to safety. Persyn talked about returning some of her jewelry: “I know these are things, but she talked about how ‘This was a time when my grandkids played,’ and ‘I remember this from when we all went to the beach.'” Helping her bring back those memories, Persyn said, “was really heartwarming.”

“There’s also been a lot of behind-the scenes reunions with people who’d lost loved ones,” she said, and she’s keeping those stories to herself, out of respect and deference to their losses.

“I will keep those close to my heart.”

A family’s heirlooms returned

The Deupree family has been on the receiving end of the Found on the Guadalupe River group’s kindness.

Taylor Deupree lives in Houston and much of her extended family is in Dallas. But to all the Deuprees, home is their grandmother Penny’s house in Hunt, Texas, near the Guadalupe River, just 2 miles from Camp Mystic.

It’s been a family gathering place for decades, said Deupree, and Penny Deupree is the family matriarch who keeps “scrapbooks upon scrapbooks” of Deupree family lore, her granddaughter said. Penny Deupree was among nine family members rescued from the home’s roof as floodwaters raged around them. The house was heavily damaged, Taylor Deupree said, but the garage, which held many of the family’s keepsakes, was destroyed.

Among the items that have been found and returned to the family: photographs, heirloom silver pieces and mementos from lost family members, including a pocket watch from Dr. Tague Chisholm, a pioneer in the field of pediatric surgery, and a painted portrait of Frances Hodgson Burnett, who wrote “The Secret Garden.”

The people contributing to the Found on the Guadalupe River group and the way the community has stepped up to help people, even after so much loss, are “the real silver linings,” Deupree said.

An errant oar and how ‘hope floats’

Andrew Diggs was among those who responded as part of a joint search and rescue team with TEXSAR and Heroes for Humanity to help find people who vanished in the flood. While he was searching, he came across an old wooden paddle with markings that gave him pause: the year 1962, Greek letters.

“It was a 1-of-1 piece of memorabilia lost in the chaos,” he wrote in a social media post he titled “Hope Floats: It was never about the paddle.”

“At first, it was just an artifact,” he wrote. “A personal item amid the wreckage. But the more I looked at it, the more it felt like a message. Someone, somewhere, loved this thing enough to hold onto it for 60 years. That meant something. And after everything that had already been taken by the flood, I knew I couldn’t let this be one more thing lost to time. I made it my mission to return it.”

That mission, and the Facebook group, led him to Tom Schulze, who had given it to his wife when they went to a University of Texas Sigma Nu formal in 1962. It had been hanging in his daughter’s house − more than 3 miles from where it was found − but the house was heavily damaged in the flood.

Diggs shared a text message with USA TODAY from Schulze expressing his gratitude to Diggs and a vow that “we will never clean it up and (will) do something to preserve it as a reminder of that night of infamy.”

“When we reunited Tom with the paddle, he called it a ‘bright spot in a time of immense loss and suffering,'” Diggs wrote. “To him, it wasn’t just wood and paint. It was family. History. Resilience.”

Diggs told USA TODAY he had never been very sentimental about material things; he was “a minimalist” who believed “memories live in your heart.”

That has changed, though: When he heard “the stories behind the paddle, and the web of stories from those stories, I realized it’s a physical thing that can remind you of so many good times. I’ve seen so many small things that I previously would have deemed insignificant, but now I can see what they mean to people.”

Family photos from a home called ‘Kerplunk’

Mille Kerr’s family called their vacation home of more than 50 years “Kerplunk.”

On July 4, they lost the home, even though it seemed safe, high off the ground and set back from the river.

“We are mourning the loss of the special gathering place built by my grandparents, but we’re also counting our lucky stars because a large group of family members who were at the property during the flood escaped just in the nick of time while so many others suffered unimaginable loss,” Kerr wrote in an email to USA TODAY.

An aunt saw several family photos posted on the Found on the Guadalupe page, including one with Kerr’s mother and grandmother at a wedding at Kerplunk.

“I have many mixed emotions about the fact that we are going to be reunited with undamaged photographs while others await the bodies of missing loved ones,” she wrote.

“I’m so proud of the community for coming together to mourn this tragedy − and find whatever goodness is left.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Thousands join effort to find treasures in the mud after Texas floods

Dondi Voigt Persyn holds jewelry recovered after flooding along the Guadalupe River. Persyn and two friends started a Facebook group to reunite flood victims with some of the possessions they’d lost in the July 4 flood. © Provided by Dondi Voigt Persyn

Volunteers launder clothing and other items recovered after the July 4 flooding along the Guadalupe River. A Facebook group has helped reunite flood victims with some of their lost possessions. © Dondi Voigt Persyn

The Deupree family was able to recover a pocket watch that belonged to Dr. Tague Chisholm, a patriarch who was a pioneering pediatric surgeon. They thought the watch had been lost in the July 4 flooding along the Guadalupe River. © Taylor Deupree

Taylor Deupree said one of the treasures her family has been able to recover after flooding along the Guadalupe River is a painting of Frances Hodgson Burnett, a family member and author of “The Secret Garden.” © Taylor Deupree

Andrew Diggs was among the volunteers helping with rescue and recovery efforts after the July 4 flooding along the Guadalupe River. He found this paddle and was able to return it to its owner. © Andrew Diggs

Mille Kerr said her family’s home along the Guadalupe River was lost in the July 4 flood. A Facebook group meant to reunite victims with recovered items helped facilitate the return of treasured photos like this one, she said. © Mille Kerr

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©Taylor Deupree

Volunteers are helping Texas flood victims reunite with mementos of lives upended.

Here, some heirloom silver pieces belonging to the Deupree family were recovered from the flooding along the Guadalupe River. See more items recovered from the floods.

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©Brandon Bell, Getty Images

Search and rescue operations are performed in the Guadalupe River on July 14, 2025 in Kerrville, Texas. More than 160 people are still missing after storm cells halted over the area, dumping nearly 15 inches of rain and causing a 22-foot rise along the Guadalupe River.