Etc.

It's yours if you want it

For all Karen Cline knew, the older fellow who walked into Taylor's Country Diner in Mansfield, Ohio, one day last week was just another customer wanting lunch. He didn't look familiar, and when he asked if she remembered him, she said "no." But that was while he still held one hand behind his back. Then he extended it, and, in Karen's own words, she "went to pieces." For in Jim Wagner's hand was an album of photographs ... from her wedding, 27 years ago. Wagner, you see, took the pictures when Karen and Mark Cline were married in 1980. Both were still in their teens, and they didn't have $150 to buy the pictures. Over the years, they assumed that record of their marriage was lost forever. They'd been making do with a single snapshot that someone else had taken. Wagner found the album while cleaning out some old files. Then he happened to run into Karen's stepfather and, through him, traced her to the diner, because "I just thought she might like to have it." It was an emotional reunion. "She gave me a big hug," he said. "Then another big hug and another big hug – more hugs than I get in a month." After regaining her composure, she wrote a check to Wagner for $150. "They're priceless," Karen said of the pictures. And timely, too ... because when Wagner handed over the album the Clines were just two days shy of their anniversary.