Police, volunteers help sanitation worker collect dead son's photos
The story of a sanitation worker in Houma, Shanxi Province, who lost a mobile phone with the only photos of her dead son, has caught the public's attention, Beijing Morning Post reported.
After great effort, some volunteers helped her find some photos, with the support of local police, and handed them over to her after printing them out.
One of the volunteers gives a photo album to Liu.
The cleaner, Liu Xinlian, took her dead son's phone out on the morning of August 31 when she discovered her own phone was out of power.
However, she unexpectedly lost the phone which stored the only photos of her 27-year-old son, Zhao Kai, who died from heat stroke when installing a billboard in the summer of 2017.
After losing the photos, the helpless woman cried every day, sometimes refusing to eat, her colleague told media.
Many people offered to donate money or new phones to her after media widely reported her heartbreaking story, but were all declined by Liu who said she just hoped the person who picked up the phone could send the photos back to her.
Though local police were involved, they failed to find any clues showing who picked up or stole the phone.
On September 14, www.chinapeace.gov.cn launched a campaign on Weibo to search for Zhao Kai's classmates, friends or colleagues who could provide photos of the man.
Meanwhile, three volunteer college students from Hubei, Shaanxi and Tianjin met with a local student in Houma on September 13, and began to help Liu collect her son's photos.
A family photo and a portrait of Zhao Kai drawn by a web user whose major is art.
On September 15, the volunteers handed a photo album to Liu which included a small partial photo of her son that they collected, as well as pictures of Zhao and the family drawn by heart-warming web users.
Liu was greatly touched and said that although she lost her son, there are still a lot of people in the world who care about her.
