Happy reunation in Vancouver took seconds on Facebook.com
What could have been a long and fruitless journey has become an unusual and inspiring tale for a Manitoba man and his birth mother after they reunited on a social-networking website.
Travis Sheppard and Lori Haas had applied for adoption documents to narrow their search for each other but their breakthrough came through a few keystrokes on Facebook, not a letter in the mail.
“I never would have imagined that it would be so easy,” said Sheppard, 20, a Brandon man who moved to Vancouver in March to begin his search.
“The funny thing is I was actually planning to delete my Facebook profile.”
Haas found Sheppard’s online profile in late June, almost a year after she obtained his name in his closed adoption file. Before that, her efforts to find him had stalled. She gave birth to him when she was 17 and unprepared to raise a child.
“It’s been my biggest regret,” said Haas.
Sheppard said she shouldn’t feel bad about her decision.
“She was trying to give me a better life,” he said.
Looking at Sheppard’s profile picture, Haas was certain he was the son she gave up at birth. She sent a Facebook message to him stating she was looking for a relative with his name.
Sheppard didn’t recognize her name, but browsed her profile.
“I saw a picture of her and I knew instantly it was her because of how much we look alike,” Sheppard, who once lived in Winnipeg, said last week.
When Sheppard replied a day later, they realized their search was over.
“I nearly lost it. I was crying, shaking and laughing,” Haas, a 37-year-old nurse, said from Vancouver.
“This couldn’t have worked out better if someone wrote it in a story.”
Within 48 hours of Haas’s message they were face-to-face at a Vancouver restaurant, where Sheppard learned he has an 11-year-old brother and nine-year-old sister.
“We said, ‘Hi,’ and we hugged and got a little emotional,” Haas said. “His personality and my personality are so similar, it’s scary. I think we bonded automatically.”
Later that day, Sheppard met his birth father, who has stayed in touch with Haas.
“All along there’s been something missing and I never knew what it was,” he said. “Since I met them, now I know what’s been missing in my life.”
Meanwhile, Sheppard is still waiting to receive the documents that would have revealed his birth mother’s name.
“It’s pretty much irrelevant now because she found me,” he said.
From http://winnipegsun.com/News/Manitoba/2007/07/21/4356745-sun.html
