I Made Friends With A 102-Year-Old Woman Because Of An Accidental Email

...and also a guy with the same name as me. It's an internet miracle.

These days, the internet can be a scary place.

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It often seems like it's just full of trolls, fake news, and heated debates.

Watch the story about the happy side of the internet here!

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But sometimes in the world wide web, something magic happens.

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I got this sweet email from a 102 year old woman named Bea... intended for someone else named Jordan Imbrey.

This email was especially cool because my recently deceased grandmother was also named Bea.

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She's the person I felt most similar to in my entire family. Here's me dressed up at her 80th birthday party.

The thing is that there are only 10 people with my last name.

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I'm related to most of them.

Bea kept trying to find the correct Jordan, and getting me.

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She was getting frustrated.

Really frustrated.

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I became determined to try to help her find the right Jordan.

Around the same time, Bea and I both figured out that she was looking for Jordan Imbery. In case you missed it, she just switched the "e" and "r" from "Imbery" to "Imbrey".

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Jordan Imbery makes windows and doors in Canada. He's Bea's distant relative, and they met on AncestryDNA, but had never met in person.

Given the magic of Jordan & Jordan, and Bea & Bea, I decided to ask if Bea would stay my pen pal.

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We've stayed in touch since April.

After a few months, I figured it'd be really cool if we all met in person. So Jordan and I met up in Renton, WA.

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We got along swimmingly.

Then we had our big moment meeting Bea in person!

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It was pretty sweet.

She showed us around her house.

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She's lived there for over 70 years!

Next, we went to book club with her.

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Her book club was the subject of the very first accidental email.

While we were reminiscing about the funny emails, she told me that I was "new family".

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This was a pretty freakin' powerful moment for me.

We closed things off with a big family dinner.

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Everybody knew the whole story about the emails.

As always, saying goodbye was the hardest part.

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"Hugs are one thing that are easy to give, and don't cost anything." - Bea

Needless to say, I won't forget my pen pal family any time soon.

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