After misplacing, or accidentally throwing away a financially-important, handwritten document, my husband and I systematically searched our house for a week leading up to December 23rd, 2021. Losing almost all hope, and with Christmas looming in just 2-days, my husband found a piece of notebook paper that contained the indentation of the page before it, which appeared to be our crucial record.
We researched how to recover handwritten documents and found people that used techniques such as shading with a make-up brush or a graphite pencil. This seemed too high risk because most of the words were not visible to the naked eye. We decided to try and find an expert.
We found Jan Kelly’s website, forensicdynamics.org, after searching keywords we learned from our investigation – “detection and recovery of indented writing (non-destructive).” From there, we sent her a message and had no idea what to expect. She responded within an hour, and after a phone call, invited us to meet her on Christmas Eve. We attempted to dissuade her from working on the holiday and assured her we did not mind waiting until after Christmas (even though we were secretly dying on the inside). She insisted, stating she “understood what this must feel like on our end.” Wow!
Stunned, we hand-delivered our document to Jan Kelly on Christmas Eve morning, and she called just a few hours later with AMAZING news! Jan had successfully recovered the writing! After picking up our documents and returning home, my heart skipped a beat as I successfully logged into what I thought was an account, lost forever.
Mrs. Kelly was professional, kind, and understanding of our situation to say the least. My husband and I call her our real life superhero because her skills are rare and her customer service is out-of-this world. We can’t believe how lucky we were to have found her within miles of our home.
Lindsay
January 6, 2022