Daughter is all shook up
Woman took to social media to find her father — he’s an Elvis impersonator
Melonie Dodaro told herself she was prepared for any outcome when she launched a social media plea last week to track down the father she never met.
But was she indeed ready to learn that her dad is an Elvis impersonator living in Thailand with children named Elvis and Priscilla? Maybe not. “When I first watched a video of the Elvis impersonation, I thought this is just weird, I can’t believe this is my father,” Dodaro, 46, told the Star from Kelowna, B.C.
Her search for Cees de Jong, who performs as Colin Young, is a testimony to the power of social media. Within 72 hours of Dodaro posting a video on Facebook last Saturday asking people to share it and help her in her quest — which has amassed nearly 30,000 views — she was speaking on the phone with her long-lost father.
“His first words were ‘Hello Melonie, this is Colin, your daddy,’ ” said Dodaro, who was born in Toronto. “I laughed, and my first words were ‘Hi, Daddy.’ ”
Dodaro said she had very little to go on when she made the video. She only knew her father’s name, what she believed to be his birthday, and the name of his hometown in the Netherlands.
She also knows from her mother that she and de Jong met at a dance in Brampton in 1968 while he was travelling through Canada. He asked her to dance — they ended up dancing to every song — and he got her phone number.
In 1969, after de Jong had already moved to Australia, Dodaro was born at St. Joseph’s Hospital. She said she was told about her father when she was very young.
“I thought about it every single day,” she said. “I stopped thinking about it every single day probably in my mid- to late-20s, when I thought this is probably never going to happen . . . But it drove me crazy not knowing.”
Turns out de Jong had also tried to look for Dodaro. While he was living in Australia, he was told by her mother that she had had a child, but he lost contact after she remarried and changed her name.
Then, in1985 on his way back to the Netherlands from Chile, de Jong’s plane made a stop in Toronto and he tried everything to find the daughter he never knew, including going to the Red Cross and offering the police $1,000 to help, Dodaro said.
Fast forward to this year, and Dodaro finally decided to appeal to the masses through social media after several unsuccessful searches and talking about it with a friend.
“It was very difficult before, because Cees (and) de Jong are actually the most common first and last names in the Netherlands,” she said. “It’s kind of the equivalent of looking for John Smith in North America.”
In the video uploaded on Saturday, Dodaro asks people to share it widely, especially with anyone who may have a Dutch connection. On Monday, she was contacted by a newspaper reporter from her father’s hometown, who offered to help find de Jong.
“By the time I woke up on Tuesday morning, the mystery was solved,” she said.
Dodaro was contacted on Facebook by people who turned out to be relatives in the Netherlands, who were convinced her father was a member of their family. Another woman began posting photos on Dodaro’s Facebook page of a man named Colin Young, who she said was a very famous musician in Europe in the 1970s and ’80s, and had appeared in film.
The reporter got back in touch and said they had a phone number for de Jong in Thailand.
“He said ‘Would you like it?’ and I said no. I was terrified,” she said. So the reporter made the call, which has led to several more conversations between father and daughter. They will meet in person for the first time in August when Dodaro travels to Thailand with her husband, her son and his partner.
“Honestly, this is the first time that I have ever felt complete,” she said. “This missing part wasn’t necessarily about having a relationship with my father, but it was just this not knowing. I just had this incomplete feeling in me all the time.”
Dodaro, who works as a social media consultant, said she would encourage anyone else in a similar situation to not give up.
“We are now so connected. Our world is now so small,” she said. “With the tiny little bit of information I had, and the most common Dutch name in the world, I was able to find my dad.”