Dottie Shelton of Corvallis thought she would be doing someone a favor when she tracked down the owner of a collection of 8 mm films that her daughter found in a hand-me-down dresser in Texas. But who could have figured that the original owner would also turn out to be from Corvallis?

About one year ago, Jennifer Shelton moved from Corvallis to Dallas, Texas. Her stepmother, a hairdresser in Dallas, gave her a dresser to help her get started in her new home.

When Jennifer Shelton decided to move back to Corvallis last April, she looked more carefully at the dresser. In it, she found two packages - one with an 8 mm film camera and another with five tin canisters of old 8 mm film. She told her mother, Dottie, and her grandmother, Gaynell Gipson, about her find.

"(Jennifer) thought about throwing them away," Dottie Shelton said. "But when I looked at the labels, I thought someone would miss them."

The films were labeled with family events, such as "Texas," "Our first skiing trip," "Carlsbad" and "Michael's 10th birthday - 1983." One of the packages also had a Chico, Calif., mailing address and a phone number.

"We called the number on the envelope," Dottie Shelton said. "The message didn't sound right, so we called directory assistance and found that the number was still the same, but the area code had changed."

Dottie Shelton then located Michael, now in his mid-30s. He was the boy whose 10th birthday and other life events had been captured on the old family films.

Dottie Shelton left a message in August for Michael, who returned the call about 10 minutes later.

"We were surprised to find him," Dottie Shelton said. "But we were more surprised to find out that he had moved to Chico from Corvallis 23 years ago."

Shelton read the labels on the film canisters to the man, she said.

"He said 'Oh, my gosh! Those are irreplaceable,' " Shelton said.

Shelton sent the films and the other items to Michael in California this week, and he insisted that Shelton list a return address so he could pay her back for the postage.

Gipson said the man from California didn't offer an explanation of how the dresser with the films had traveled to Texas, and she didn't ask.

"This is the first time that I could do something for someone like this," Gaynell Gipson said. "He seemed pretty happy to get them and was amazed that they had been found. I just thought these were things that he would probably want."