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Woman Tries To Find Man Who Bought Her Home Videos At Garage Sale

CHICAGO (CBS) -- An Aurora woman has been trying to track down the man who inadvertently bought some of her family keepsakes at a garage sale last week.

At the Laurel Ridge subdivision's garage sale on Friday, Samantha Van Horn's very first customer was interested in buying a bin of video game systems.

"It was just packed full of cords and stuff, and he asked if he could just take the whole tub, and purchase the whole tub. So, I of course let him," she said.

What she didn't realize until later in the day was the bin also contained about 10 mini-cassette tapes of her four children.

"Football games when they were little, first birthdays, just home because of Christmas; just typical kids home video stuff," she said. "Anything monumental, I guess, in a kid's life is on that video."

The kids are now in their 20s and Van Horn doesn't have copies of the home videos.

Van Horn said she hopes someone knows the roughly 40-year-old man who was driving a red convertible mini-Cooper with British flags on the side mirrors, so she can get in touch with him to recover the precious tapes.

She expects the buyer lives near her subdivision, given that the garage sale was advertised only with yard signs and a community Facebook post.

"Driving by my neighborhood as their commute to work every day, or they have friends that have kids in the neighborhood, something. It has to be somebody local, I would think," she said.

Van Horn said she has driven around for hours, posted messages on social media, and even talked to police in hopes of tracking down the man who bought the tapes.

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