I have made the suggestion previously one should Google his or her name and state to see what turns up online. The reason I suggested this was to see how much personal information appears, information like one’s name, address and home phone number. One time I found my home number listed and with Google, it takes only a couple of clicks on the map icons to get turn-by-turn directions to one’s front door. One father who decided to Google his own name found instead an ominous message that his daughter was looking for him. Ominous because for the past 27 years Dirk M. Pratt had believed she was dead.

Dirk Pratt’s daughter traveled to Ecuador with her mother as a toddler. Later he received the information his daughter Francesca was dead. He has alleged he spent each of her birthday’s looking at the one photograph he had of two-year-old Francesca playing in the bathtub. The bereaved father fell into a depression fighting his internal guilt for having allowed his daughter to travel overseas with her mother.

The idea to Google his name came after he saw a movie. Dirk M. Pratt typed in his name on Google.com and received the message telling him his daughter was looking for him. His now thirty-year-old daughter grew up believing her father was dead. She was lead to believe he had died in a diving accident when she was a baby, yet something told her to look for the answers of how or where he died.

Modern technology or the World Wide Web, which has a very dark side and can be very unsafe, has a bright spot in the world, by reuniting a father and daughter separated by time, thousands of miles and deceit. If there was any doubt that Francesca was his daughter, that doubt had to disappear when the father and daughter met. Francesca is the spitting image of her father Dirk.

Dirk M. Pratt not only has found his daughter but also found out he will be a grandfather soon. Francesca is pregnant. I have said not even death can stop true love; especially the bond between a parent and a child, and in some cases that love transcends across cyberspace, despite the evil and deceit of one parent and family who tried to keep them apart. If you have not looked up your own name on Google.com, why not see what you may find. One more question, where is Francesca's mother and can she be charged with kidnapping?