Sometimes an emotional value can far outweigh any monetary value.

That's the case with Gainesville resident, Matt Freeman's collection of home videos he recorded of the lives of his two children.

Tuesday when those videos were taken from Freeman's home on Denton Drive, their memories essentially vanished.

Or so they thought. Friday, the videos mysteriously turned up outside their door, a day after a suspect was arrested in the case.

It began early Tuesday when someone broke into the Freemans' home and stole several items, including jewelry, a laptop, a leaf blower and a camera bag containing about 30 of the home videos.

After forgetting her phone and ring, Freeman's wife, Anjana, returned home around 11 a.m. to find the bedroom had been ransacked.

"When she called me I said ‘Call the police right now, I'm on the way home.' I immediately got in my car, and as I was driving home, the only thing on my mind was that box of movies," he said.

"I could think of nothing but just getting home to make sure that box was there."

After realizing the videos were gone, Freeman became emotional.

"I really lost it. I think tears shot out of my eyes. I was heartbroken over it," he said.

Without having any backups of the videos, Freeman would never be able to view the birthdays and family memories of his children, ages 4 and 5.

"That's just the worst thing I could imagine happening was that box getting taken, so it was horrible," he added.

Freeman set out to track the videos any way he could.

"I was just distraught and didn't really know what to do, and the first thing that popped in my head was ‘I need a miracle here, I need some help,'" he said.

He even considered digging through mounds of trash at the landfill in case somebody had thrown them in the garbage.

"It was doing a number on my soul. It felt like somebody had stole a part of my life. They had cheated me and my wife of ever going back to see our kids as they were at that age," Freeman said. "Somebody had cheated us out of that for something that was worthless to them, but meant everything to us."

The morning after the burglary, Freeman made fliers and hung them in his neighborhood. To provide an extra incentive, he offered a $1,000 reward for the videos.

And the miracle Freeman was counting on actually happened.

Thursday, an investigator from the Gainesville Police Department called Freeman to tell him there had been an arrest in the burglary.

Mario Garcia, 18, of Gainesville, had been arrested in connection to an earlier burglary. After questioning him, investigators charged him with the burglary of Freeman's home as well.

During the investigation, officers questioned Garcia about the videos. He said he didn't know anything about them but did know of the reward, said Kevin Holbrook, public information officer for the Gainesville Police Department.

"The guy (the police) picked up actually had heard of the reward, which I thought was pretty amazing," Freeman said.

Even with an arrest, there was still no sign of the tapes.

But Freeman continued to hold out hope. And when Anjana Freeman walked out the front door Friday morning, the box of videos was on the doorstep.

"I didn't hardly believe her," Freeman said. "I knew that surely she wouldn't play a joke, but honestly it was just hard for me to believe."

The emotions Freeman felt the previous three days suddenly turned to joy.

"Obviously I was just beyond happy. It was just an amazing feeling and I've been on Cloud Nine all day knowing that we have them back," he said.

Authorities haven't been able to determine who returned the tapes while the burglary suspect was in the Hall County Jail.

"That is currently under investigation, whether there was anyone else involved in the crime," Holbrook said. "We know that, obviously, someone else is involved. It's just to what extent their involvement is in the crime."

Freeman plans to copy the videos and leave a set in a safe at his father's home, a second at his house and put the originals in a safety deposit box.

"I'm not going to go through this again. I've learned my lesson on that and I would urge people with similar irreplaceable items to do the same and think about that kind of stuff ahead of time," Freeman said.