One day, you're in the newsroom, beating the bushes for a column, when a friend calls you over to his desk. He's working on a story about commercial shipping and is studying the Sailors Union of the Pacific Web site, which maybe three people in the entire world have ever called up. I am looking for a man of Filipino decent who in 1979 was working on a ship named Tropical Sea. His name is Mhanny Dela Cruz. The ship was here in Baltimore in said year.
Any help is appreciated.
Might be something for you, this friend says. At that moment, it is all you can do not to kiss this guy. So you e-mail this person looking for Mhanny Dela Cruz, tell this person you're a reporter, ask this person to call if he or she has a story to tell. The next day, the phone rings, and Anna Feliciano is on the other end. Turns out she's been looking for Mhanny Dela Cruz for a long time, more than 20 years.