Dub finds Brazilian dad... via Facebook and Davina McCall!
Parents met in New York nightclub
A DUBLIN man has said his life finally feels ‘complete’ after a TV documentary crew helped him find his Brazilian father.
Pearse Egan, 29, had all but given up hope of ever meeting his birth father, after initially launching a Facebook appeal and then contacting the production team behind TV series, Long Lost Family – without success
The award-winning programme, which sees presenters Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell attempting to reunite family members with their missing relatives eventually did respond but had very little background information at their disposal after agreeing to help him.
Although details relating to Mr Egan’s father were patchy, it was known that he was a Brazilian national who had been working as a security guard in a New York club when he met a 17-year-old Irish co-worker, called Ann.
Shortly after becoming pregnant, Ann left New York and returned to Dublin, raising her son in Dún Laoghaire as a lone mother. The first and only time the boy heard from his father was on his sixth birthday when they had a brief phone conversation on a pay-phone, after he had sent his son a birthday card.
But that was the last contact they ever had – and as he got older, the heartbroken son’s repeated attempts to track him down came to nothing.
And despite the close relationship he enjoyed with his mother and younger brother Darryl, he found it increasingly difficult not having his father in his life.
Mr Egan, who is a Londonbased actor, admits he had all but given up hope of ever finding his father, when he got a call back from the makers of Long Lost Family.
And happily, the documentary’s team found his father, 62-yearold Eddie Santos, in New York – leading to an emotional meeting between the pair in London.
Speaking ahead of the documentary, which will be screened at 9.30pm on UTV next Tuesday, July 17, Mr Egan recalled the moments leading up to meeting his father for the first time. ‘We met in a restaurant in London, and as I came down the stairs to meet him, I saw this man stand up and say, “There’s my son.”
‘My heart felt like it had stopped, because I had waited my whole life to hear him say that.’
As it turned out, Mr Santos had never given up on meeting his son, and in one of the documentary’s more heartfelt moments, he holds back the tears as he says, ‘There are no words to describe this...I never lost hope.’
The pair have since built up a strong relationship, with Mr Egan even planning a trip to Brazil with his father next year.
But the story doesn’t end there, as Mr Egan not only found his father, but also discovered he has another brother – Mr Santos’s son, Nick Kucharski, 31, who was born two years before Mr Egan and who looks remarkably like his half-sibling.
Mr Egan recalled: ‘I met Nick on a recent trip to the States. It was one of the craziest moments of my life, because we look the exact same. It was like looking at American, ginger version of me. I spent time with him in San Francisco and we got on great. We are so similar in so many ways.’
And summing up his feelings on achieving his lifelong mission to both find and start to build a relationship with his father, he added: ‘I really never thought any of this would ever happen, and I was so close to giving it all up as I had been trying for so long. It really has been life-changing.
‘Now I feel more complete, confident and happy.. Even saying it sounds crazy. I now have a mum, a dad and two brothers.’