"These are memories that belong to them," Destinee Johnson tells PEOPLE
An Arizona woman got more than what she bargained for when she bought a VCR at her local Goodwill store.
Destinee Johnson tells PEOPLE she bought the VCR — which also had a mysterious tape inside — on Monday, Dec. 2.
"Once I got everything set up at home, I decided to watch the tape out of curiosity," she says. That’s when she was introduced to a little boy named Christopher.
The tape, which she's watched dozens of times since, contained 14 minutes of home videos that showed Christopher opening presents and spending time with his family on Christmas morning, according to local independent station KTVK and CBS affiliate KPHO-TV.
"It started off a couple days before Christmas showing a snowy yard, and then cut to [Christopher] playing with my mom in the snow," she tells PEOPLE. "I thought it was super cute. And then it cut again, and it was Christmas morning and Chris was coming down the stairs to presents."
The video also showed important milestones in Christopher’s life, like meeting his newborn baby brother for the first time, Johnson adds.
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The mom says something about the video "made me tear up a little" because she has a little boy around the same age Chris was in the video.
Speaking from experience, Johnson says that after the death of her grandfather in 2021, she found watching his old tapes really helped the family navigate their grief.
"That experience plays a large role in me trying to get it back to the family," she adds.
Courtesy of Destinee Johnson
Destinee Johnson with her husband Kyle and their two children.According to KTVK/KPHO-TV, Johnson reached out to the Goodwill store in Mesa to see if they had any knowledge of the VCR's origin, but due to the store's large influx of donations, they don't know exactly where it came from.
Now, she's even using social media to spread the word about her special find.
"I decided to post about it in a local group, hoping that, just in case this was donated on accident, the family would see it and I could give it back," she tells PEOPLE. "From there it kind of took off."
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But while she hasn't yet had any success, Johnson says "it would mean a lot to be able to get this back to the family because these are memories that belong to them."
"They were documented beautifully," she adds. "It would be really cool for Chris to be able to see himself on Christmas Day."
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