When Hope Rutledge and Eddie Rodriguez met, they were rain-soaked and exhausted and on the final leg of three long days at Kilby Block Party.

Rutledge and her best friend Mataya Wright had skipped the musician Blood Orange’s set across the Utah State Fairpark to get a good spot to see the music festival’s headliner, Lorde. While Rodriguez, whose friends were at the back of the crowd, moved up on his own for a closer look at the stage.

“What broke the ice was that her friend brought a piece of cardboard that they used as a rest,” the 26-year-old Rodriguez said.

They took turns sitting for a bit. They talked. And then, in their delirium, they danced.

Rodriguez captured joyful videos of them. But they got swept up in the magic of the music, and when the set was over, Rodriguez was running to use the restroom, and Rutledge had forgotten to ask for her new friend’s number.

So she turned to Craigslist to see if she could track Rodriguez down by the details she remembered. Then, Missed Connections SLC, an Instagram account dedicated to helping people reconnect in Utah, found and reshared the post.

Nostalgia and modernity

Amber Marie, a Salt Lake City native, started taking screenshots of posts she found on Craigslist about 10 years ago. About four years ago, she started running her own social media account to share them and has seen more and more interest.

She has seen all types of people looking for their missed connections: an in-the-moment encounter at the St. George Black Bear Diner, a look of empathy for a struggling father at Trader Joe’s and even a senior man looking for gardening tips.

“I do like kind of being a personal archivist,” Marie said. “Everyone has a story to tell and I want to help these stories find other people.”

For her, visiting Craigslist and finding these stories has been a part of her life for years. She always loved finding personal stories online, gleaning these uniquely human moments.

“I remember reading personal ads in the newspaper when I was 15 years old, and I was always like, ‘Oh, I wish somebody would write one about me,’” she said.

When she found a mixtape at Deseret Industries, she tried to find the person who made it. “Side one was ‘Fall in Love with Me’ and Side B was called ‘The All Mixed Up’ and it was a really good mixtape,” she said. A Craigslist post followed.

“That was the first time that I really kind of went viral, and that I knew how far Craigslist could take me,” she said. Even though she never found the creator of the tape, it encouraged her to look at other cities’ Missed Connections accounts and start her own.

Marie combines a blend of nostalgia and modernity on her account and considers herself a hopeless romantic.

“The ultimate goal of me posting onto Instagram is I’m trying to bring Craigslist back into Vogue,” Marie said, “In an age of Tinder and Hinge and all those other dating sites, I do like the more personal side of Craigslist.”

As such, she feels a bit like an Aphrodite or Cupid.

“With dating accounts, you are looking for pretty much anybody that shares the same similarities as you, but with Craigslist you are looking for that one particular person, and it really is like two ships passing in the night,” Marie said. “If you find that person, it is like absolute magic.”

Marie sets her searches to Utah in general, with a 250-mile radius, and weeds through the posts to find the best ones. She tries to post three to five times a week. Once she does, she hopes that she can be a small part of people’s stories.

‘It was literally fate’

That’s what happened with Rodriguez and Rutledge.

“You were SO nice, and we had so much fun dancing with you,” Rodriguez wrote on Craigslist after the music festival. “I meant to ask for your number, but I was too overwhelmed with emotion after Lorde’s set lmao. Message me!! I wanna be friends!!!”

They might not have found each other if Marie hadn’t found the post first.

The two music lovers reconnected in the comment section the Missed Connections SLC post. Rodriguez said Instagram’s algorithm brought him there, since neither he nor any of his friends followed the account.

“It was literally fate,” Rodriguez said.

Neither of them expected to reconnect, but they’re happy they did.

“People are really craving community nowadays in a world that is so digital,” Rutledge said.