( Starting Dec. 22 and ending Dec. 31, GuelphToday will count down its top 10 stories of 2017.)
Hannah Ryan really didn't have much to go on where she started looking for her biological father.
In 1984 her mother Karen was in Guelph for a few weeks working as a nanny. After a night out at a Guelph bar and an "alcohol fuelled" romantic encounter with a tall, handsome blonde man named Dave and a last name that sounded like "Pinnochio."
"He has no idea he has a daughter," said Ryan, 33, who posted a photo of herself on Facebook holding up a sign giving the bare bones details of what she knew.
"Now that I have children of my own it just breaks my heart. Life is short," said Ryan, who recently had her second child.
She was looking for the man for 16 years.
But with the help of Facebook and lots of well-intentioned people on the internet, the Australian woman now settled in B.C. was able to connect with the man who never even knew she existed.
The Facebook post was shared 50,000 times in just a couple of days.
Eventually she found her dad, who lived in Hamilton.
After staring at the phone for a long, long time to "summon up the courage," she cold-called him.
"I just said 'I don't really know how to put this, so I'm just going to blurt it all out,'" Ryan said. "He said 'oh my god, I remember that night!
"It's amazing. After 16 years of searching, in one day I was able to find this man. If (Facebook creator) Mark Zuckerberg was here I'd give him a big hug!"
Ryan also discovered she has two brothers and a sister.
