Restoring What's Been Lost: Texas Volunteers Retrieve Flooded Items from Riverbanks

A small group of volunteers is taking on the painstaking task of recovering and returning remnants of people's lives found along the Guadalupe River. Dondie Persyn, founder of Found on the Guadalupe River, was holding a mud-soaked teddy bear when Scripps News met her.

"This one's going to take a lot of love to get clean," she said. "A lot of love."

More than 100 people were killed in Kerr County when the Guadalupe River overflowed during a powerful storm on July 4. As the community begins to rebuild, some of the most urgent recovery work isn't happening along the riverbanks — it's unfolding in places like a local car wash, where found items are taken to be power-washed.

Volunteers pack the freshly washed clothes into large bins and load them into the back of a pickup truck. What started as a simple Facebook group has grown into a network of nearly 50,000 people from across the country.

"I think that almost all of the people that go there are just looking for a piece of hope and a story and a piece of 'before.' Like, I call it 'before,'" said Persyn. "Something to remember before all of it happened. And that's when things were normal. And that's when, you know, kids would play and families would get together. And we'd have our everyday laundry and dinner and all those things 'before."

Once the clothes are power-washed, they're hauled to a nearby laundromat — soaked, washed, washed again, and dried. Between rinse cycles, Persyn and her team scroll through the Facebook feed, searching hundreds of photos, comments, and connections—anything that might help match a recovered item with its rightful owner.

But cleaning the river's debris from belongings is only part of the work. A more emotional task unfolds inside an old building on the edge of town.

"These items came from the sheriff's department," Persyn said. "We have organized them and placed them in tubs depending on what type they are. These are items that are labeled and ready to go and ready to be reunited."

Among the items, Persyn noted, are a Bible and even a letter that says, “Mom, I love you.”

"Every one of us that live in Texas Hill Country, we're connected through the river," she said. "I knew I had to get in here and help my neighbors and help facilitate this reunion of fragments of life."

She added, "By returning to the river and acknowledging what happened here, honoring those fragments, honoring those pieces that were left behind— I think that that's just a part of healing."