Comedian Tom Kelly turns to TikTok to reunite Long Island grad with lost diploma

Tom Kelly was finishing up his morning walk near his Upper West Side apartment on a gloomy St. Patrick’s Day when something peculiar caught his eye.

On top of a bed frame left out for garbage lay a Class of 2016 Syosset High School diploma, along with personal journals.

"Who the heck would throw that out?" Kelly recalled saying to himself.

This question, which he took to social media to help to find the Syosset High School alumna who owned the document, went viral on TikTok last month, garnering more than 150,000 views.

The Massapequa-raised comedian, known for his commentary on Long Island towns and culture, said his own high school diploma was destroyed in Superstorm Sandy, so he knew that the loss of the document was significant.

But Kelly said he also wanted to return the journals that were left in the open, saying, "The journal really is a true, tangible and irreplaceable thing."

After finding little information in a quick Google search, Kelly took to TikTok to ask about Alexandra Dayna Durst, the name on the diploma.

Kelly, who has more than 29,000 followers, said that, in almost real time, "TikTok detectives" were on the case, many of whom reached out directly to Durst, known as Sandy.

"People contacted me over text; people were writing in the Syosset Mom Facebook group and the Huntington Facebook group. My chorus teacher contacted me," said Durst, 27. "My principal called my mom."

The St. John’s University law student said that two days before the viral video she had visited her parents, who live in Manhattan, and had gone through some of her high school belongings. Durst, who now lives in Fresh Meadows, Queens, said she noticed a box of journals that had mildew on them and asked her parents to throw it out.

"I didn't even see my diploma was in there," Durst said.

When Durst learned of the video from a friend who FaceTimed her, she said she was concerned that anyone could have read her personal entries. She was grateful Kelly had kept them safe.

"It was also encouraging that when social media needed to get this task done, that the algorithm met and found all these people," Durst said.

Both Kelly and Durst believe someone must have gone through the trash and scattered her items before Kelly found them.

She contacted Kelly several hours after he posted his initial video, saying she was the owner of the items and that her father, John Durst, would pick them up.

Kelly said meeting John Durst was a classic New York story, as the two discovered they were neighbors.

"I've become accidentally popular on TikTok and Instagram, especially for my Long Island content," Kelly said. "So, it's just funny that with having a New York City apartment as well, that Syosset led to me meeting a man whom I've lived in the next building to for 15 years, and I finally got to meet him."

Kelly posted a follow-up video on social media of him reuniting the items with Durst’s father. The two ended St. Patrick’s Day drinking beer in John Durst’s apartment, cheering to a mystery solved — and a new friendship.