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In 2006, a friend of mine acquired over 70 8mm film reels at an auction in the Middle of Nowhere, SC that were all from a single family living in Miami from 1952-76. We made it a personal mission to find the family to whom these reels belonged and began watching each individual reel in hopes of acquiring enough information to complete our quest. As we watched, we learned that there was a little girl whose name was disclosed [although not here, publicly] who would have been about 8 during the Christmas of 1956. Doing the math, we figured up her age and started a quest to find this little girl. We named the project and began to chronicle our every maneuver, from cataloguing the reels chronologically to “Google” searching the names of this little girl and her father. We also researched the location from which the reels were sent off for development, a small home in downtown Miami, only to find that the house had been sold to a local animal shelter.

The collecting of facts through voyeuristic viewing of another person’s childhood was enthralling and we found that we were able to while away hours watching reels and recording found data. Despite the warnings of those around us, we received enough confirmation in the benefits of our actions to warrant our plunging ahead.

Sadly, the arrival of our respective children and a couple marriages got in the way of our progress and the Project quickly made it’s way to the back of my closet. Only in the last few months as I’ve been moving the last few boxes of stuff from my mother’s house have I stumbled back over the reels and my documentation, but my interest was immediately piqued.

As Greg’s family was sitting around our house this evening, I asked his Grandmother for a little help on the Project as she’s been a longtime resident of Miami. I showed her a GoogleMap of the exact location of the house and she was able to fill in the blanks as to the surrounding businesses and community centers, including the local high school that the little girl would have been able to walk to. After the family left, I Google searched the name of the high school and the name of the girl, certain that I would be lead to an empty Classmates.com search and nothing more.

However, instead I was lead to this photo site where this girl (under her married name) had commented a year ago on an old photo of a former Miss Universe, discussing her childhood in Miami and that she had attended the high school I was searching for. The woman even included what year she graduated in what would ordinarily seem like an inordinate amount of information to include in a simple photo comment but was exactly the information I needed to confirm that this was the woman I’d been looking for for so long!!

Excitedly, I searched for this woman’s recent addresses, only to find that her most current phone number had been disconnected. Like a professional stalker, I conducted a number of free searches on various people-search services and began acquiring names of relatives until I found a brother who lived in Tennessee.

Just moments ago, I got off the phone with this woman’s sister-in-law who was shocked by my story but extremely complimentary of my initiative to find the little girl and will be getting back in touch with me sometime after she calls her at her home.

So, after two and a half years, this Project is finally solved and I am through the moon with excitement.

Just had to share.