Long-lost relative missed out on last chance to contact family member before their death after Facebook message lay in spam folder
Tegan Waites is desperately trying to contact a man who messaged her three years ago in an attempt to track down her father
A LONG-LOST relative missed out on his last chance to find a family member before their death after his desperate appeal was left unread for three years.
The message, written from a man called Geoff, was sent to Tegan Waites on Facebook as he attempted to track down his uncle - but the note about her late dad was left unread after it bounced into her spam inbox.
The message had been sent to Tegan in 2013, a year before Tegan's father Jim passed away.
The 35-year-old woman has now launched an appeal to find Geoff, who has de-activated his Facebook account since sending the initial message.
She said she was disappointed to have missed Geoff and the opportunity to reconnect him with her father.
She said: "I was quite disappointed because if I had seen the message in 2013, my dad would have still been alive to see it.
"I tried to message Geoff back but it came up saying he had deactivated his account.
"I’m guessing he must be in his 60s and live in England, because he knew my dad in London before he moved to Wales in the ‘80s. It makes me wonder if Geoff only started his Facebook account to find me, and then deactivated it because he didn’t get a reply.”
The message was sent from Geoff in 2013, and explained how he was trying to track down Tegan’s father, James, after he moved to Wales from London in the 1980s.
It said: "Hello Tegan. Sorry if I have the wrong person but I believe you may be the daughter of James Waites, or Uncle Jim as I knew him; he was once married to my Aunt Pam, but they divorced in the early ’60s.
"I know he later had a daughter named Tegan, and also a daughter Melanie, I think, but we had lost contact over the years, after he moved to Wales. I have a phone number in an old address book, but I tried it and had no luck.
"If by any chance I do have the right person, and your father is still with us, I would like to contact him."
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Filtered request messages usually fail to make it to people's general inboxes as they are sent from users who aren't connected on Facebook.
Tega, from Treherbert in the Rhondda, said: "Every now and then I’ll check these hidden messages, but when I went on there the other day I found around 20 I hadn’t read.
"Some of them were spam and some of them dated back to 2011, but the one from Geoff looked really unusual."
FACEBOOK MESSAGE FROM GEOFF
Hello Tegan. Sorry if I have the wrong person but I believe you may be the daughter of James Waites, or Uncle Jim as I knew him; he was once married to my Aunt Pam, but they divorced in the early ’60s.
I know he later had a daughter named Tegan, and also a daughter Melanie, I think, but we had lost contact over the years, after he moved to Wales. I have a phone number in an old address book, but I tried it and had no luck.
If by any chance I do have the right person, and your father is still with us, I would like to contact him.
She has now launched an appeal as well as messaging others with the same name on Facebook.
She said: "I spoke to my mother about it and she told me that she thinks my father’s first wife Pam, is from the Stepney area of East London and that she was Jewish.
"That’s all I really know so far.
"I just want to find Geoff and talk to him about my dad. I feel like I should tell him he has passed away and I thought it would be nice to share our memories of him.
";It would be great to find out more about my dad from the older days, he was a bit of a character back then and he lived an extraordinary life. It would be interesting to know what Geoff thought about him."
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