Catching up with the Vancouver Stanley Cup riot 'kissing couple,' 10 years later

Lam recalled them seeming overwhelmed by the attention. "I told them this isn't a bad story, you know, they haven't done anything wrong. I could just hear in their voice that there was a little bit of fear and hesitation because everyone was looking for them. The CBC building was staked out. The Vancouver Sun building was staked out. Everyone in the city was looking for them," he said. "I was being as normal and human to them as I could, and helped them out. 'All right. Here are your options.'"

His advice: Do a couple of national TV interviews, one in Canada and one in Australia, and then be done with it.

"He said it's best to give the dog a bone. Or else they'll keep hounding you, basically," said Thomas.

The Australian one came about in a peculiar way: Lam was booked on a show and had to bail an hour before airtime due to a conflict. The producers were upset. He told them he had a replacement lined up -- the couple themselves.

They did a sit-down interview with CBC News in Canada and added a third media appearance: "The TODAY Show" in the U.S.

"We didn't do a lot of press. It was a couple of days before we were leaving to go on a trip through California, and then move to Melbourne. We wanted to get our side of the story out there," said Jones.

They felt that was important. It was their story after all, and they wanted to take ownership of it. Because when you're a viral sensation, so many others are inventing their own sordid tales about you, as Jones and Thomas would unfortunately discover.

The downside

Jones remembered walking out of the TV interviews and feeling like everyone recognized them. "It felt weird being out in public," he said.

Some certainly did, like when the couple made their trek to California. "A lady at the baggage claim at the airport recognized us. Another guy came up to us in a bar in San Diego, saying, 'It's you, from the picture.' You don't know how many people recognized us, but those are the ones who came up to say something," said Jones.

Then there were those people whom Jones and Thomas never met, nor would want to meet. The speculative media. The online trolls and gossips. Like the ones who tried to actively discredit the authenticity of the image.

"Even to this day, people still think the photo is fake. Every now and then it'll pop up and you'll see people's comments like, 'oh, this is staged,' or 'this is Photoshopped' or all sorts of s---," said Jones.

Lam dealt with those accusations too, and took them to heart. "That kind of hurt, personally, that people are saying that it's fake. I know there are going to be trolls everywhere, but to question my integrity of covering news and all that ... I had to stop reading it," he said. "People were like, 'Oh, they planned this.' And I'm like, 'Who plans this during a riot?'"

Luckily for Lam, he had a way to prove that the photo was in no way staged, despite it being slightly before the proliferation of social media video in moments like this. Laura Trillitzsch, a photographer, had recorded Seymour Street on her phone as the police marched through, knocking the couple to the ground and kicking them in order to get them to move on.

For Jones and Thomas, the accusations of having staged the photos were secondary to the other things they were reading online about themselves.

"The media was making up stories about what was happening to us as well," Jones said. "That she had been stabbed. That I wasn't her boyfriend. That she was raped later. All sorts of things." 

A writer for The Post Game, for example, tweeted that the kiss "looks like it could be something sinister. How do we know that girl is alert and willing?"

"Just horrible things that weren't the truth at all," said Thomas. "Disheartening to read, and uncomfortable. People will just invent a story if they don't have a backstory for what happened."

But the intensity of viral stardom is a quick burn. Thomas estimates it lasted three weeks.

"For me, it was frightening and I almost got hurt," she said. "I felt pretty removed from it. It's an interesting thing that happened."

The anniversary

Jones and Thomas now live in Perth with their daughter. They opened up a craft beer bar called Beerpourium that showcases Aussie beer. It opened six months before the COVID-19 pandemic, but Jones said it's doing well.

They have two copies of the photo, signed by Lam and displayed prominently. One is in their house. The other is at the bar.

"A lot of people have seen the photo, and they don't know it's me," said Jones. "A lot of my staff thinks it's funny. There's an interview of me from 10 years ago, so I look really young. Most people think it's a cool thing."

Thomas, who is also a senior project engineer at Water Corporation, gets a reaction when people find out about their viral image history.

"It's a little weird for me because it's not a work-appropriate photo," she said. "Everyone once in a while someone will mention it. It's office banter. 'Hey, did you know she's the one?' They'll bring it up in the lunchroom." 

The photo has also popped up a few times in the last decade in pop culture. The image was used as cover art for alt-rock band Placebo's 20-year retrospective album "A Place for Us to Dream" in 2016, and the group sent the couple a signed copy. It was featured in the credits sequence of "Modern Love" on Amazon Prime as well. Lam said Getty is in charge of licensing the image.

For the couple, it's a moment of their lives frozen in time, and a moment for Thomas' hometown that she still has trouble comprehending.

"That's where I grew up. I had no idea that something of that magnitude and severity, of people having that crowd mentality, with the looting, [could happen]. I mean, it wasn't violence against other people so much, but violence against the whole city, with that crowd mob mentality. It's nothing I've ever come across living in Vancouver, that's for sure," she said.

"After speaking with people who lived in Vancouver, it was a bit of a tragic event for the city," said Jones.

Lam had three colleagues assaulted that night, and initially had someone with him after Game 7 to watch his back as he chronicled the mayhem. "It was his first riot, and I told him, 'I think you better go home,'" he said.

Ten years later, Lam feels fortunate to have captured the image, despite the inherent danger.

"Personally and professionally, I was quite happy with that picture. I was the only one that got it and I had colleagues around me. In a crowded event, it was unique that no one else had that picture," he said.

"In this day and age where everyone has cameras, during an event like that, you rarely have something that unique. I have riot pictures that look like other riot pictures. It all ends up kind of looking the same. I'm truly lucky and honored to have [captured] something like this."