An Internet Success Story
by Joanne Riley

I have an Internet success story that is so exciting that I thought I'd share it... I have an Aunt Bee who lives across from my mom at Panorama City. All my relatives came to my house for Christmas and when I was driving Bee and Mom home, Bee started crying and told us that all she had really wanted for Christmas was to know what happened to her youngest son, Mike.

Mike's Dad (who died a couple of years ago) had kicked Mike out of the house and told him he was no longer a part of the family when Mike told the family he was gay - about 15 years ago. Bee had never heard from him since. One of his sisters had heard that he died of AIDS, but they couldn't confirm that. I told Bee that I could try an Internet search. She said that she had already had that done. Also, she said she was sure he had changed his name. So I asked her anyway, for a list of any name she thought he might be using.

When I came to work on Saturday, I tried a general metacrawler search using various combinations of his name. On the second try I got a hit from a State University Comic archives. Mike is an artist and had published a cartoon. His 'art' name was slightly different, so I went out and tried that name. I got an immediate hit - he had published cartoons last summer in a journal in the midwest. I called the journal and the editor answered right away and gave me an address for the contributor. I called information in that city and got his phone number. Aunt Bee talked to him yesterday. He is fine, with a great job and a committed partner. The whole search process took me about a half hour to start to mend 15 years of pain. The Internet is incredible.

Reprinted from theTimberland Regional Library Employee Bulletin with permission.

Postscript from Joanne, after our newsletter was printed: The story continues to be successful. He has been up to see his mother twice and they have done better each time. His sister Jill went to visit him. She said his house is wonderful! Both the house and yard as full of exquisite art. My mom said Cousin Mikey (that's not the name he uses now) is really handsome. He has shoulder length red-golden hair, is about 6'4" and slim. She thought he was wonderful.

I don't know if you want to add this to the story but one reason I ran that story in the Employee bulletin was to encourage researchers to use the wide open web to search for lost people. When most of us are looking for people we first choose some of the sites set up for this. And Aunt Betty had tried that and gotten no hits. But by searching totally free-form you can get hits like mine where I found a publication.

 

Olympia PFLAG Heartbeat page ~ Olympia PFLAG homepage