A New Brunswick woman has Facebook and a social media-savvy service station manager in Nova Scotia to thank after being reunited with her missing camera.

Amanda Hachey was on her way to Louisbourg, N.S. to spend a fun long weekend with friends when she noticed her camera was missing.

The Moncton woman searched her car and the cottage where they were staying but could not find the camera, which she had borrowed from her partner.

“And I had a text message from my sister, who lives in Calgary, that said ‘where’s your camera?’ and I was like, what the heck?” says Hachey.

“Then, I had another text message from my friend Tanya, who lives in northern New Brunswick, that said ‘did you lose your camera? You should check Facebook!’ And I was like, what is going on?”

Hachey and her friends had stopped for a break at a service station in Lower South River, just outside of Antigonish, N.S.

The camera was found in the parking lot, but manager Matthew Overmars figured a sign in the window probably wasn’t going to be enough to track down its owner.

“I went and looked at it to see who kinda showed up on the camera most and there was two people, so I decided to post both their pictures, hope that somebody would recognize them,” says Overmars.

Overmars posted Hachey’s photo and that of her partner, Aaron Lewis, on the service station’s Facebook site. Within hours, the post was shared by more than 1,200 people and seen by more than 45,000.

“At about 20 hours after the original post, somebody wrote that they recognized her and actually posted her name. They were correct, it was the right person,” says Overmars.

“We had completely dismissed the stop in Antigonish as a place to even look, so if Facebook didn’t exist, we wouldn’t have the camera,” says Hachey.

A grateful Hachey picked up the camera Monday on her way back to New Brunswick and left a small treat.

“I happened to have some maple sugar candy in the car, so I gave him that, but I’m going to send him a thank you card and some other things too,” says Hachey.

Overmars says he knew tracking down the camera’s owner by any means necessary was the right thing to do but he’s glad social media made the task an easy one.

With files from CTV Atlantic's Dan MacIntosh