One "lost and found" story inevitably brings up another, as last week's story of the lost Kamehameha Schools ring did. You can get lost in all the losts and founds. But then one story arises from the jumble that has the magic combination of elements: a mystery to solve, a keen emotional peg, the chance for a happy ending.

Marie Kwiatkowski has been trying hard to find that happy ending.

On April 23, she and her husband, Mel, found a camera in the parking lot of the Kailua Foodland. She returned to the store and left her name and number at the store's office in case anyone came back looking for their Canon PowerShot 12-megapixel digital camera. She checked back at the store three times. No one came to look for the camera.

"The reason I am trying so hard is I reviewed the chip of pictures and it broke my heart because we know there is a mother pining for the return of these pictures," Kwiatkowski said.

The pictures are of the birth of twin babies, a girl and a boy. The series starts in the birthing room and continues through their first year of life, including their first birthday party.

"The babies look like little tweety birds, bald with big blue eyes," Kwiatkowski said. "Cute, cute, cute." In one photo, the babies' father is wearing a cap that says "Coast Guard Barbers Point." At their birthday party, the babies are wearing shirts that say "Nathan" and "Maren."

"I sat through over 300 pictures, trying to recognize a face or location in the background to narrow the search," Kwiatkowski said.

She put a free ad in The Advertiser's lost-and-found section twice and bought an ad in the military paper. She put notes on the bulletin boards outside of the PX and commissary. She tried calling the Coast Guard station locator. Her granddaughter even enlarged one of the pictures from the babies' birth to see if they could read the mother's name on her hospital wristband.

"A lot of CSI," Kwiatkowski joked. "I've been playing detective, but I must not be very good at it because we haven't found them yet."

They made copies of the hospital photos that include the attending doctor and nurse and took them around to a couple of hospitals, but that didn't break the case. The pictures are date-stamped up to the day the camera was found, so though the owner may have copies of the earlier pictures, she probably never saw the shots she took that day.

"It would make me so happy just to return this camera with these precious, precious pictures to the mother," Kwiatkowski said. "We even stop to check out twin strollers whenever we see them. I hate to just give up. I know how irreplaceable these memories are."

If you know the owner of this camera, you can contact me at The Advertiser at 535-8172.