Miracles do still happen.
Ricki Lake took to Instagram on Monday to share the “craziest” story of how a stranger had found her old family photos “at a freaking flea market.”
“I can’t even process” this, the former talk show host says in the video. “My words are not coming.”
Lake, who lost her Malibu home in the Palisades fire in January, recounted how a couple of her friends had reached out to her Sunday night to let her know that someone had posted images of old photos featuring Lake and her son on social media and was trying to get in touch with her.
“I couldn’t believe what I was seeing because all of it was gone in the fire,” Lake says.
Patty Scanlon, the artist who had posted the images, joined Lake on Instagram Live to share how she stumbled upon the photos while looking for inspiration at the Pasadena City College Flea Market.
“It was like the universe drove me to get your pictures,” Scanlon says, explaining she found a box of photos at the first vendor she hit at the market and bought it for $20. “I opened the pictures and the first one I saw … I thought ‘Oh, I love that woman’s face.’”
The artist didn’t immediately recognize the woman in the photos, but as she looked through more of them she realized it was Lake and her son Milo, who is now 28, as a toddler. In addition to the photos, Scanlon found a letter that indicated Lake had mailed them as a thank-you for some gifts that were given to baby Milo.
“These pictures are so priceless to me,” Lake says. “They would be anyway … but the fact that I lost all of these images in the fire in January … I thought they were gone forever.”
“I had made peace,” she continues. “It was such a heartache and such a painful thing to come to terms with. That all of these memories are no longer in front of me. They’re just in my mind and heart now. But the fact that you found these is unbelievable.”
In the video, Scanlon hypothesizes that the box of photos probably ended up at the flea market after an estate sale and says she can’t believe what a “miracle” it was that she had found them after learning about how Lake had lost everything in the fires.
“I really cannot thank you enough for your generosity,” Lake says to Scanlon. “The fact that I’m going to get something back that I thought was lost forever … it makes me so happy.”
