POLSON — A father and son need your help in getting mysterious video footage from 2018 back to its rightful owner.
Karl Kachigan and his son Peter were visiting their family home on Finley Point when Peter noticed something strange on the dock next to theirs.
"I saw a little red thing and I wanted to know what it was," said Peter. "So, I went over to the other dock and it was a little rechargeable battery connected to a GoPro. And I was curious why it was there. So, I took it up and plugged the SD card into the computer and it had three hours of footage on it on a balloon."
However, Karl said that what was even stranger was when and where the GoPro looked to be from.
The video appears to be from February 2018.
"It managed to catch some jet stream, flew over and in the final footage I think the helium balloon burst and you can kinda see it spiraling and tippling and whatever," said Karl. "And finally, it came to rest in Polson Bay on top of ice. But the date on the video card said February of 2018 and here we are in July 29 of 2020."
Miraculously, the Karl says the video survived the long trip and the fall.
Peter said that the GoPro was covered in dirt and he had to pry the case off of the camera in order to access the SD card.
Looking through the video Karl tried piecing together the balloon and camera's trip.
"So, we saw, originally if you look at the video we saw what looks like a river, what looks like a lake. And there was kind of this unique airport that had at least four runways in an x pattern," he said.
He said that he consulted with various aviation experts to pin point what airport was in the video.
After studying the video and its landmarks Karl says he believes the camera and balloon originated in Moses Lake, Washington, and then traveled over to Polson.
Peter says working on solving this mystery of who this is and how to get his camera back to him with his dad during coronavirus has been fun.
"There hasn't been very much stuff to do since we can't go to a lot of places," said Peter. "So, this has been a fun little project to work on."
They both just want to return the video to the rightful owner so they gave the video to us.
"We're trying to connect up with that boy and or his parents so that he can get his footage back," said Karl.
If you recognize the person in this video please contact Karl at karlk@ammondson.com
