Daughter Finds Father on Facebook

He always wanted to know the age of his baby girl. At age 3, Jennifer Lupella was separated from her father and later placed in foster care. Her mother told her not to look for her father because it wasn’t worth the effort. And some relatives even said he was dead.

But on the morning of Dec. 16, Christopher got an unexpected Facebook message from a woman named Jennifer Lupella.

“Can I ask how old you are?” the message read. “Are you from Chicago?”

Christopher was stunned.

“How old are you?” he wrote back.

The woman told him her birth date and said she was turning 43 soon. After all the years he’d kept track of his daughter’s age, Christopher couldn’t believe what he was reading. This was a moment for which he had been waiting 40 years.

“I’m your father,” he told her.

Their exchange became another example of how Facebook and other social media platforms have been a medium for reuniting fathers, daughters, siblings and old friends all over the world.

Now that they’ve connected, the Lupellas are hoping to meet in person. But neither has the means to travel right now. Jennifer works construction in Chicago. She has four adult children and three grandkids. Meanwhile, her father is in Colorado Springs and lives on Social Security checks.

“I really want to see her,” said Christopher, 60.

He thought a reunion wouldn’t be possible.

He was 17 years old when his daughter was born. He then lost custody of her. He joined the Air Force and served in the Vietnam War. He came back to America and was drawn to the beautiful landscape of Colorado. He stayed for a while until he went back to Chicago to help take care of his grandparents, who died in the late 1980s.

He returned to Colorado and found work at local hospitals. And later, he became a printer. He always thought about his daughter. He searched for her online but never found a Jennifer Lupella.

Jennifer started looking for her father at age 10. She got married, had kids and later divorced before she took back her maiden name.

Recently, she decided to look up her father by the shorter version of his name, Chris instead of Christopher. It worked.

Soon after, she sent him a message.

Both cried when they realized that years of searching for each other were over.

Now, the father and daughter trade text messages and pictures every day. They tell each other “I love you.” They know they’ll reunite in person.

“I want to meet my dad, and I want my kids to meet him,” Jennifer said. “I just really want to meet him.””