SINGAPORE (THE NEW PAPER) - When two teenagers came across an unattended camera at Siloso Beach in Sentosa, they waited for almost an hour for its owners to retrieve it.

No one did.

Instead of leaving it there, the Bickham family set out on a mission to find its owners by informing The New Paper, which then wrote about their discovery and posted an article on TNP's Facebook page.

It worked.

After the post was shared over 1,000 times, the owners of the camera - a family from Jakarta, Indonesia, who had been in Singapore on holiday - contacted TNP for help to get in touch with the Bickhams.

A relieved Madam Yuri Nursarasywati, 35, said: "I was speechless when I heard that Mr Bickham went to great lengths to return the camera to me.

"He made me believe that there are still kind people in this world. I'm thankful for him and his children (who had found the camera)."

Madam Yuri said the GoPro Hero 4 Silver she lost was bought just three weeks ago by her husband for about 5 million rupiah (S$520).

She told TNP in a phone interview from Jakarta that she visited Siloso Beach last Saturday as part of a five-day trip to Singapore with her husband and their four-year-old son.

"We had so much fun. We took the cable car, rode the luge and spent time hanging out at the beach," said Madam Yuri, who works for a telecommunication company.

At 4pm, they washed up and changed into a new set of clothes and were about to head to dinner when Madam Yuri discovered that the camera was missing.

"In the midst of tending to my son and carrying the belongings, my husband must have forgotten to put the camera in the bag," she said.

Valuable

"I panicked because we have so many pictures in that camera, and they are very valuable to me," said Madam Yuri.

The couple retraced their steps back to the beach but the camera was nowhere to be found.

Madam Yuri approached a guest relations officer at a ticketing booth about 10 minutes away from the beach, who took down her details.

"I was so sad. I really thought that I would never see it again," she said.

The family returned to Jakarta on Sunday.

The camera had been picked up by two of Singapore permanent resident Alan Bickham's children.

While in-line skating on the beachfront, Ryan, 16, and Melanie, 18, found it at the Siloso Beach sign at about 4.50pm.

They carried on with their activities before returning to check if the camera had been claimed.

When they saw it was still there, they waited for the owners until 5.45pm. Then they decided to take it to their father.

"I was extremely proud of my kids, that they knew the right thing to do," said Mr Bickham, a 48-year-old house husband from the UK who lives with his Singaporean wife and three children in Sentosa.

Instead of turning it over to the police, where they thought it might be forgotten in a lost and found box, they posted the pictures online, hoping someone would recognise the family.

And someone did.

Madam Yuri said on Monday, some of her Singapore acquaintances asked her if she had lost her camera.

"I was so shocked because I didn't tell anyone about losing it," she said.

Some of them also tagged Madam Yuri on TNP's Facebook post to alert her about the search.

Mr Bickham said that Madam Yuri had contacted him and arranged for her friend who lives here to collect the camera.

He said: "I feel that it sets a good example for my children.

"If I lose something valuable, I hope others would do the same for me."