The Internet ... You Can Run But You Can't Hide

Having just a brief bit of old information can oftentimes help you find people from your past.  It's a bit scary if some wacko is trying to find you but quite exciting if you are the wacko trying to find someone   : )   My husband & I at one point during our many, many moves lost touch with his birth mother & her family.  A little over a year ago I sat down at the computer & thought I'd try once again to find one of them.  I had tried this many times in previous years & had no luck ... but this time I found the son of a half-brother with a phone number listed.  We called, had some nice phone conversations, & now we all know where we are   : )

I posted the other day about finding my old tatting friend by just Googling her name & being led to her old website on which she had posted a link to her Etsy shop.  I went to her Etsy shop & found nothing for sale but I did find her contact info.  I dropped her a line & we are now catching up   : )

Over the years John & I have often wondered what happened to some very good friends we used to have when our children were younger.  (For the purpose of this posting I'll call them Harry & Betty & their children George & Monica.)  We met them when we lived in Florida.  John & Harry both worked for the VA where they met & really hit it off.  It wasn't long before we got together as couples & Betty & I also hit it off.  Time went by.  We shared many meals, visited many fun places, & played cards every weekend.  Children were born & played together.  After a few years John & I moved to Montana & Harry & Betty moved to Oklahoma.  We visited them in Oklahoma once while we were living in North Dakota & had a fun visit but then suddenly life went every which way & we lost touch.  We tried many times over the years to find them but never could.  I was thinking about them again yesterday & decided to type their names into Google to see if I might have any luck.  I didn't ... at least not at first.  I first tried Harry's name, then Betty's name, then the names of the children.  At one point I came across several Bettys & one had the middle name Kay.  A light bulb lit up above my head & I remembered that this was my old friend's middle name.  I searched some more.

Let me stop here to say that there are sites you can stumble across when you are searching for someone & these sites will give you a wee bit of info ... like the name of the person & the name of a town where this person has lived ...  but then they want you to pay money to get further info.  I never do that ... I just keep hunting & pecking around.

As I continued my search I found a site that listed Betty Kay's name & a few of her "associations" which were the names of Harry & the children.  I then played around some more & found a link to an attorney in Oklahoma with the same name as Harry & Betty's son.  When I clicked on the link, I knew immediately that I had found George.  His photo was on the site & he is a dead ringer for Harry & Betty   : )   I emailed him via the law firm's contact link explaining who I was & asked that if he was indeed Harry & Betty's son would he would please give them my contact info.

This morning I received an email from George confirming that yes, he is the son of Harry & Betty & that he would pass along my contact information to Betty saying that he was sure his mom would be thrilled to give me a call   : )