Law Student Puts Off Paper, Finds Owner of Lost Camera Instead

Law Students

Law Student Puts Off Paper, Finds Owner of Lost Camera Instead

Posted Jan 29, 2008, 06:39 am CST
By Debra Cassens Weiss

A second-year law student at New York University put off a paper he was writing on climate change treaties, but he deserves an A for what he did with his time: He tracked down the owner of a digital video camera his fiancée found in the back seat of a cab.

Brian Ascher first tried placing a lost and found ad on Craigslist and checking with the city’s taxi commission to try to find the owner, but turned up no promising leads, the Associated Press reports.

Then he began looking at the photos and videos and pursued the digital clues. He heard Irish accents on the video and saw name tags of two people with the letters “IRE.” He also saw people posing by bars and a hotel, so he and his mother began to call them to see if anyone could recall hosting an Irish group.

He struck pay dirt when he called a New York bar called Standings. The bartender recalled the group and a big tipper who worked at another bar, Playwrights. It turns out the family of the Playwrights bartender had hosted the group, and the camera’s owner was found—he now lives in Australia.

The camera owner is delighted, the story reports. “I owe you one,” he wrote to Ascher.

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