Student turns sleuth to track down family in photo

Nicola Hellem (left) has been reunited with the photograph she left in a book she gave to charity, picked up by Emily Morse (right)

When Emily Morse from Devon found a photo featuring a mystery family while flicking through a second-hand book from a charity shop, she knew what she had to do.

Launching a mission to reunite the sweet seaside portrait of a mother, father and baby to its rightful owners, the Plymouth student turned to social media for help.

Ms Morse posted the picture on Facebook and waited for the social media network to work its magic.

Nicola Hellem, who was traced a while later and reunited with the snap showing the family during a trip to Cornwall, said it took a "nice person" to instigate such a search.

The toddler in the photograph is now a happy five-year-old Eve

Ms Morse, who discovered the picture while reading Mix Tape by Jane Sanderson, said: "I got the book about three years ago from a charity shop, it had just sat on my book shelf until then."

Soon enough, after she posted the photograph, a message came through from Plympton's Nicola Hellem - whose daughter Eve had since grown from the baby in the photograph into a five-year-old girl.

She said: "I think it was through the second comment that I found Nicola - it was very fast.

"I messaged her on Facebook and dropped it down one night after work."

Ms Morse, who said she was studying a degree in speech and language therapy at Plymouth Marjon University, told John Acres at Breakfast on BBC Radio Devon she was even able to meet Ms Hellem's daughter - the star of the photograph.

Mrs Hellem said one of her work colleagues alerted her to the social media post.

She said she was happy to see the photograph - which also features her husband James Hellem, adding: "I didn't even realise it was missing.

"When I had a tag asking if it was me, it was so lovely - it was the first picture of our family in Cornwall with our daughter who was eight months at the time."

Mrs Hellem, who works at St Budeaux Primary Academy in Plymouth, added: "I must have sent it off in one of my books I gave to charity when we were moving."

The family had moved from Abingdon in Oxfordshire to Plymouth just before the second Covid-19 pandemic lockdown, she said.

Revealing the photograph was taken in Looe, and thanking Ms Morse, she added: "It takes a nice person to find it and want to do that."