A Canadian woman who made a social media plea to track down the father she never met needed only three days to learn that he is an Elvis impersonator living in Pattaya.
Melonie Dodaro, a social media consultant, said she was prepared for any outcome when she posted her video on Facebook last Saturday, the Toronto Star reported.
Within 72 hours — testimony to the power of social media — she had a phone number and was soon chatting with her dad.
"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.'"
Not only did she learn that Elvis was alive and well in Pattaya, but also that he had children named Elvis and Priscilla.
"When I first watched a video of the Elvis impersonation, I thought this is just weird, I can’t believe this is my father," said Ms Dodaro, 46, who lives in Kelowna, British Columbia, 400 kilometres east of Vancouver.
Ms 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.
The name, Cees de Jong, is not one that many of his Thai friends would recognise, since he's better known in Pattaya and on his YouTube videos by his stage name, Colin Young.
Ms Dodaro knew from her mother that she and Mr de Jong had met at a dance in Brampton, just outside Toronto, 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 Mr de Jong had already moved to Australia, Melonie Dodaro was born at St Joseph's Hospital in Toronto. She said she was told about her father when she was very young.
"I thought about it every single day,” she told the Star. "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."
It turns out that Mr de Jong had also tried to look for his daughter. 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, in 1985 on his way back to the Netherlands from Chile, Mr 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, Ms Dodaro said.
Fast forward to this year, and Ms Dodaro finally decided to appeal to the masses through social media.
"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, Ms Dodaro asked 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.
"By the time I woke up on Tuesday morning, the mystery was solved," she said.
Ms 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 Ms Dodaro’s Facebook page of a man named Colin Young, who she said was a famous musician in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s, and had appeared in films.
The reporter got back in touch and said they had a phone number for Mr 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 Ms 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."
Ms Dodaro 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."