Estranged Mother and Son Reunite
Posted on Tue, Nov 10, 2009
In April of 2008, an elderly mother requested that Texas Investigative Network, Inc. help her locate her estranged, adult son. She had not spoken with him since several years prior, at which time he had fallen on hard times. His business had floundered, and he was forced to sell nearly all of his assets just to get by. From the beginning, the case’s success appeared to rely on the difficult task of making contact with a nondescript, middle-aged man who was living out of his vehicle in a large metropolitan area and working day to day labor jobs with very little stability. Yet the purity of the case’s larger objective – to assuage the maternal concerns of an aging mother disposed to fear the absolute worst – outweighed any reservations that may arise from the apparent difficulty of the assignment.
The initial research proved fruitless – not surprisingly – as the transient lifestyle of the son made him very elusive. An unlikely break came, however, with the discovery that the son was a witness to a recently perpetrated crime. As a witness, the son’s name and his pre-paid cellular phone number were listed in this incident’s police report. Though the detective handling the criminal investigation would not release the telephone number (for understandable reasons), persistence revealed two other law enforcement offi cials with access to the witness’ information, the second of whom was sympathetic to our client’s situation. After the contact information was obtained, a candid telephone conversation between Investigator Stewart Batsell and our client’s son revealed that times for him were still difficult, and his perceived embarrassment and shame from his own struggle was what kept him from reaching out to his mother. After several more mediational telephone conversations thru which the mother and her son communicated indirectly, the ultimate goal of the case was accomplished when direct contact between the two was re-established. Although it was sad to discover that the son’s struggles continued, the case had a warmly personal conclusion when the mother expressed her gratitude to TIN for coordinating the communication that put to rest her troubling fears regarding the fate of her son.
