We"ve all been witness to the power of Twitter when it comes to worldwide crises like the Haiti earthquake, the Iran elections, or even the more recent Egypt problems, but this story perhaps hits a little bit closer to home.
Daniel Morales, a 58 year old man in New York City was one of four homeless people given a prepaid cellphone and a Twitter account as part of Underheard in New York. The program gave these four different men these technologies to broadcast what it"s like being homeless. Morales lost contact with his daughter when she and her mom moved to the United States from Puerto Rico in 2000. But that changed on Wednesday, February 23rd, when Daniel Morales (who has more than 3,000 followers on Twitter) updated his account saying he was looking for his daughter. On Thursday, he posted a picture of her from when she was 16. And by Friday, he was reunited with his daughter after eleven years.
A strange woman who had never been in contact with either Daniel Morales or his daughter, 27 year old Sarah Rivera, saw the picture and found her on Facebook.
Below is a video of Morales receiving the call from his daughter:
Rivera told the CBS NYC local news that "[Twitter] holds a purpose and that purpose is that you can instantly find anybody and it"s amazing." While Morales, who called his rekindled relationship "awesome," says he will continue to tweet even though he"s been reunited with his daughter and has finally met his grandchildren.