Like any doting father, Joshua Peltz captured every one of his firstborn’s “firsts” on film.
Adalind’s first steps. Adalind’s first New York City pizza. Adalind’s first kiss with Mom.
Now the 39-year-old Charlotte, NC, man fears the cherished footage – stored on his cellphone – is somewhere on the bottom of the Hudson River.
‘PASSENGER PILOT’ SAW LIFE FLASH BEFORE HER EYES
He had to leave the device behind during the scramble to escape miracle US Airways Flight 1549, which crash-landed in the icy Hudson River Jan. 15 after both engines lost power upon colliding with a flock of geese.
“I’m very upset, disappointed and frustrated,” said Peltz, who was never able to make backup copies of the 40 videos of his daughter, now 2.
“It was important to me. It was important to my entire family.”
Peltz is among a slew of passengers forced to leave behind keepsakes in the chaos, including love letters and lucky charms.
They are items the airline’s offer of $5,000 per passenger cannot replace, and many fear that when their luggage is returned the water damage will have already taken too big a toll on the treasures.
Vallie Collins, of Maryville, Tenn., another of the 150 passengers rescued, is missing a stack of love letters her husband wrote when he was courting her.
The 37-year-old mother of three would read the missives, which she had tucked in a binder, whenever she traveled to reminisce about the days a decade ago when her husband, Steve, wooed her.
“He wrote that he would look forward to our time together and our future and all that mushy kind of stuff,” Collins said.
Collins doubts the letters will be found intact, or at all, but hopes to recover another keepsake – a drawing by her then-2-year-old daughter, Addison.
The tiny work of art, made into a pin that Collins wore on her coat, depicted Collins with a triangular head.
“It looks like a funky piece of jewelry,” Collins said.
Jimmy Stefanik Jr., 30, of Chicopee, Mass., lost thousands of dollars’ worth of golf equipment, but is concerned only about a Bermuda dollar coin his father gave him before he died eight years ago.
“He gave it to me like a good-luck coin,” said Stefanik, who used it to mark his golf ball and had packed it in his golf bag.
Peltz, meanwhile, is not optimistic he’ll ever see his precious videos again, but he is hoping to recover his suitcase, which held a special seashell he always travels with.
“It was the first seashell Adalind ever picked up,” Peltz said, “from our first trip together as a family of three, in Miami Beach, when she could walk down the shore.”
But if all is lost, the memories live on, he said.
“Thankfully,” Peltz added, “I’m still here to remember them in my mind’s eye.”