Aquila Warrior

The news of the Latvian young man finding his Vietnamese father only 2 days after his information was posted on VOV Online News (and then reposted by multiple news sites) has brought excitement to all members within the publishing house as well as joy to all those involved. Only in the age of the Internet could new information have been spread and yielded results so efficiently.

 

At the beginning, when we received all the data Artus had sent in along with his birth certificate, his disclosure agreement and his decision to post the information publicly, the publisher had also prepared a few other methods of finding information. A VOVonline journalist asked Artus if he had any clues regarding his father’s old friends. Arturs then provided a Vietnamese cell phone number.

 

We contacted the number, who claimed to have little information but directed us to another person who “might” have been from the same hometown as Arturs’ father. We continued making calls. The process went on for a while until we finally managed to find the phone number of the Captain who was in charge of dispatching labor (including Arturs’ father) to Latvia at the time.

 

The captain, who is well in his 70s, was enthusiastic after hearing the full story and provided us with information including: Mr. L.H.A’s (Arturs’ father) passport number, the date on which he was sent to Latvia in 1987, the name of the Agency that sent him, as well as Mr. L.H.A’s registered address in Vietnam. However, the rather nonspecific address only contained the names of Phù Tiên district and Hải Hưng province - both are landmarks that no longer exist to the division of administrative units..

 

After we had planned to spend the next day searching for the addresses of Mr. L.H.A’s parents and close relatives through his passport number, that very night we received a tip from a foreigner: they are a friend of Mr. L.H.A who had managed to contact us through the article. Mr L.H.A is currently very emotional at the news of finding his son.

 

The next day, a woman living in Hải Dương also contacted us stating that she was an acquaintance of Mr. L.H.A’s family and that she had already notified the family so that they could contact VOV Online News, all so that Arturs could find a way to contact his paternal family.

 

And so, all the characters in the story have managed to find each other. 

 

Arturs’ father later sent a thank-you letter to the publishing house. He wrote: “From the bottom of my heart, I express my sincere gratitude towards the publisher and the article’s author for helping my son and I find each other after over 20 years of absolutely no contact.

 

Luckily Artur speaks Russian, I also know some myself, and I have children living with me who speak Russian well so we can freely talk without much of an issue. 

 

For the time being, we’re gonna continue to exchange letters, make phone calls, and chat through the internet… Coming up, Arturs might come to Ukraine to visit me. If the conditions permit, I will also go to Latvia to visit my son and his grandmother. Perhaps we will even go back to Vietnam and let Arturs meet his grandparents as well as his aunts and uncles…

 

Through this article, I would also like to send my thanks to Mr. Hà Phúc Vinh and Ms. Nguyễn Mai Trinh for your assistance in the reunion of my son and I…”.

 

On Arturs’ part, he has expressed his feelings of gratitude, or perhaps something even deeper, towards his friend Tom Hà Phúc and Tom’s father - Mr. Hà Phúc Vinh. There isn’t a big Vietnamese population where Arthur currently lives. In the last 20 years, Hà Phúc Vinh and his son have always been there for Arturs, and in recent years, it had been them who encouraged Arturs to find his family.

 

Tom was the one who helped Arturs to write the missing person listings in both English and Vietnamese and post them online; he also helped Arturs to sign up for programs that assisted in finding missing relatives. When he had the chance to go to Vietnam, Tom also tried to find information on Arturs’ family but the trip unfortunately did not provide Tom with any new clues.

 

“20 years as friends, 20 years as brothers. Through all the hardships. And still together now.” - Arturs proudly speaks of his friendship between himself and Tom Hà Phúc.

 

Having found his father, his grandfather, grandmother, aunts and uncles, his cousins… Arturs shared that he could not believe that it was not a dream.”All those years, I’ve longed for a father. As a kid, every birthday, every new year’s, every Christmas,… I’ve waited and waited, waiting for the moment that dad would come back and take me with him”.

 

Before his father was found, Arturs shared that if his father would not accept him, he would not resent him at all. Still, he said: “Of course, there is nothing that I would want more than for my dad to accept me. In my memories there has always been a dad who held me lovingly when I was a baby…”

 

Arturs thanked VOV Online News for giving him the opportunity to spread the information on such a large scale so that he could find his family. These days, Arturs is still floating on his emotions. He plans on coming to Vietnam one day to let baby Mellissa (his daughter) visit her great grandparents. “My daughter will soon begin learning Vietnamese, and once she grows up, she will be a beautiful Vietnamese woman with blue eyes!”.