Google Maps Helped This Abducted Man Find His Way Home After 23 Years

Culture

Using Google Maps to find your way home may not seem like a very interesting story, but that’s exactly what one man in China did. The difference here is that the man was abducted 23 years ago as a child and used Google Maps to find his way home. 

Luo Gang was 5-years-old when he was kidnapped near his school. He was then raised by adoptive parents in the Sanming Fujan province. His birth-parents searched for him for years, but they never found him. After losing hope, they adopted a daughter, but never forgot about their missing son. While his adoptive parents treated him kindly, Luo couldn’t help but think about the parents he knew as a child. Memories of his birthplace haunted him.

“Everyday before I went to bed, I forced myself to re-live the life spent in my old home. So I wouldn't forget,” Gang told the South China Morning Post. 

Gang began the search for his hometown but did not have much to go on. The only thing he could remember were two bridges. He made a sketch and posted it to a website aimed at locating missing children. That’s when it happened. A user contacted him and told him about a couple from a small town who had lost a son around the time that Luo went missing. Luo looked up the area on Google Maps where he spotted the two bridges he had recalled so vividly all these years.

“That’s it! That’s my home,” Luo shouted in tears. His home was in an area called “Yaojiaba.”

Luo and his biological parents went through an emotional reunion, “In the past years, I couldn't help crying each time I thought about my son.”

Luo and his biological parents are elated to finally be together again, a reunion some 23 years in the making.