'It's the sweetest thing I've ever read': Complete stranger now on mission to find granddaughter mentioned in long lost journal

RIO LINDA, Calif. (WTVD) -- A man found a long lost journal sitting with a bunch of trash inside a truck that was about to be auctioned off.

"There was bunch of trash in it and this was sitting right there on the seat. So I grabbed it, I started looking through it," Luis Martinez said in an interview with a local television station.

He quickly realized the journal needed to find its way back to its author's family.

"People can look at it and be like, 'Oh it's just book; it's just a diary; it's just pages,' but it's what's written in it," Martinez said.

The journal was written by Lola Maxine when she was 91 years old. Much of the writings are directed at her granddaughter, Arabella Rae.

"It just starts with, 'My dear little hummingbird, I felt like writing to you today. Although we are miles apart, I hope can feel healthy for a while, so I can write several letters to you.'"

The writing touched Martinez's heart and now he's on a mission to find Rae.

"I kept reading and it's all to her, explaining her parents, explaining who she was and things she's gone through," Martinez said in an interview with ABC10 in Sacramento. "It's the sweetest thing I've ever read."

Martinez found phone numbers in the journal, but when he tried the numbers they did not connect him to anyone who knew Maxine.

Still he says he will keep trying. He's not going to let the journal fade into oblivion without exhausting every avenue to reconnect Rae with the grandmother that loved her so dearly.

"She's probably seen pictures of her grandmother. But, for her to actually get words, something physical from her, that would be really cool."