With the help of social media, a Tampa couple was able to reunite a family with a special gift.
- Couple witness man forced to throw away gift at the airport because he couldn't bring it on the plane
- Through Facebook, they are able to return the gift to the family
In February, Ivelise Hernandez and her boyfriend, Rico Bankston, were at St. Petersburg-International Airport. They saw a man who was forced to throw away a snow globe because it exceeded the amount of liquid federal regulations allow on planes.
"He was devastated," Hernandez said.
"He almost missed his flight," Bankston said.
When the couple found out the snow globe was a gift for the man’s newly adopted daughter, they knew they had to help. They fished it out of the trash can.
"By the time we went to say 'hey what's your number, what's your address?' he was already gone,” Hernandez said.
When they opened the box the snow globe was in, they realized how special it was. It had a picture of a the little girl and a dog on one side and a picture of her grandparents on the other.
On the bottom, it was engraved, “To Katie, Love Nana and Papa. January 25, 2016.”
"That's a treasure for someone else and you had to throw away your own present, I didn't like that at all and right then and there I knew we had to get this to him,” Hernandez said.
Hernandez posted about the snow globe on Facebook. After it was shared more than 40,000 times around the country, Hernandez got a phone call from the owners.
“I was excited I got to the point where I almost started crying,” Hernandez said. “I felt so happy for them.”
Wednesday, Hernandez and Bankston met Linda Modry to give her the snow globe.
Modry lives in St. Pete and said they gave their granddaughter the gift last time she visited from Ohio.
"Oh, I just can't believe it, you don't know what we went through, this was just a really special, something special,” Modry said.
Modry said she can’t wait to give the gift back to her granddaughter, just in time for her birthday next month.