Yes, brave and perhaps a bit risky to contact the former owners, but I hope it helps to give the kids a bit of closure.

One of the first REOs I toured had hand prints and signatures on the garage walls from the original owners. I agreed with my partner (who went through a couple of foreclosures as a kid) that if we bought the place, we’d preserve that wall as a tribute to one family’s dreams. Unfortunately the bank painted it over a few days later.

I felt substantially less sorry for the parents when I found out how much equity had been extracted from the house, but I still felt bad for the kids.