During the time that Danny Haymond has regularly provided free King’s Fork High School football photos to the Suffolk News-Herald, he probably figured the only benefit to himself would be getting free exposure for his company, Fine Focus Photography.

But recently, his connection to the paper got him his wallet back.

Haymond and his family were enjoying some time on the beach at Dam Neck on July 12 when he decided to take a stroll with his wife.

“We usually go for a walk down the beach,” he said. “It was just one of those normal walks.”

He said they walked maybe a half or three-quarters of a mile, then turned around and came back to where they had set up chairs.

Haymond said, “We were sitting there for a little bit, and my stepson goes, ‘Hey, is that yours?’”

He was looking at the ground next to Haymond’s chair. Located in the sand was Haymond’s camera remote, which prompted him to check and see if anything else had escaped his possession.

He reached into his pocket and remembered reacting, “Oh, you’ve got to be kidding me.”

He felt his phone, but not his wallet.

He searched all around for it and even walked up the beach, but the tide was coming in.

Haymond said, “We got probably about 100 yards down, I said, ‘We’re not going to find this thing. It’s gone.’”

He surmised that while pulling his phone out of his pocket during his walk on the beach, the wallet accidentally came out.

He checked with the lifeguard and the gate guard before leaving that day, but as he figured, they had not located his wallet in such a short period of time.

“So I went home and canceled everything and got everything reissued,” he said.

On the evening of July 14, a family renting Ray Gessner’s beach house off of Croatan Beach found Haymond’s wallet and brought it to Gessner the next day.

He said he found the circumstance as a challenge.

“Here you are given a problem, and the problem is that this man doesn’t have his wallet,” Gessner said. “How long does it take to get the man in contact with his wallet?”

He added, “I wasn’t going to go down and give it to the police because, I’m like, ‘All right, that takes the fun out of it.’”

Set to be at the beach for the next couple days, Gessner only had his mobile phone, but he began to tackle the challenge.

He looked through the wallet to learn what he could about Haymond, finding a military ID, driver’s license and credit cards, among other things.

“Obviously, the first thing I’m going to check is Facebook,” he said.

Gessner thought that would work easily, but Haymond was not on Facebook.

He called up one of the credit card companies, but while the company was willing to cancel the card, it said reaching out to Haymond and telling him to call Gessner was against their policy.

Gessner said, “So then, I’m like, ‘All right, I’ve got to do something. I just can’t let this guy not have his wallet because I’d be freaking out if I didn’t have my wallet.’”

He decided to post a photo of the wallet and its contents on Facebook, asking his many friends, “Does anyone in Suffolk know this guy?”

Being warned of the possibility of identity theft, he took the photo down and replaced it with one that simply showed Haymond’s photo, his name and address.

Some of his friends checked the white pages and gave him a phone number.

“I call it up, number’s been disconnected,” Gessner said.

On July 17, he returned to the office of his Virginia Beach-based chimney cleaning company, A Step in Time Chimney Sweeps, and got on the computer.

He typed Haymond’s name and address into Google and found some links to his photo credits with the Suffolk News-Herald.

Gessner reached editor Res Spears, who helped put him in touch with Haymond.

Spears called Haymond, got his voicemail and asked him to call back.

“I can promise you it will be worth your while,” Spears said with a chuckle. “I have a surprise for you.”

When Haymond got the message, he said he thought, “Hey, they’re going to hire me to take pictures now.”

He called Spears and said Spears told him, “‘Hey, we found your wallet!’ I was like, ‘What?’”

Haymond and Gessner met on July 20 to reunite Haymond with his short-lost wallet.