Garrett Hand and Jamie Neal were supposedly missing in Peru. (Courtesy)
If your son were biking around Peru with his girlfriend and keeping family updated on his adventures through social media and then suddenly stopped posting on Facebook, what would you do?
Would you contact Peruvian authorities and ask the government to search for your beloved son?
Francine Fitzgerald of Concord, Calif., did just that and now the world is laughing at her because it turns out that her son, Garrett Hand, and his girlfriend, Jamie Neal, were never really missing.
The couple from Oakland changed up their itinerary and decided to hop on a boat and travel through the Amazon where they didn’t have a cell or Internet connection.
Over at Gawker a blog post covering the story ran with the headline: “World’s most embarrassing mom makes Peruvian government hunt down her son when he stops posting on Facebook.”
The story mocks the fact that our culture has become so dependent on Facebook that we assume something is catastrophically wrong when a regular user suddenly stops posting. We’ve all become used to having constant contact with our friends and family, through text messages, tweets, wall posts. When a friend who sends you daily texts doesn’t send a message, you worry: Is she mad at me? Was she in a car accident? Is she missing? The Gawker story also implies that Fitzgerald was the ultimate helicopter mom by contacting Peruvian authorities—but was she really overprotective?
If you were in this mother’s shoes what would you have done? You haven’t heard from your son in a month. He’s in some far-flung country. He’s not answering your phone calls, your emails, your tweets. Would you jump to the conclusion that he’s missing?
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Hand and Neal, both 25, were touring Peru on their bicycles, planning to ride the 350-mile stretch between Cuzco and Lima.
The couple from Oakland was regularly posting photos from their journey on Facebook and family and friends were closely following along. Then, in late January their walls went dead silent. They stopped making calls back home.
Hand’s mom was concerned and contacted Peruvian authorities, and after a month without a word from her son she demanded a full-blown search. The country issued a nationwide alert.
International news media picked up the story, running images of the “missing” couple, who look like your typical happy-go-lucky backpackers. Days later headlines reported that the pair was never missing and simply went off the grid.
The U.S. Embassy contacted Fitzgerald to let her know her son and girlfriend were spotted on a boat on a remote jungle river.
The Peruvian tourism bureau issued a statement:
These two young people have fallen in love with Peru. They have visited off-the-beaten-path places and it seems like they’re having a blast — so much so that they have forgotten to communicate with their families.
Fitgerald wasn’t convinced and demanded photos of her son. According to Gawker, “The tourism ministry made plans to send in a hydroplane the next day to shoot video of them.”
The authorities got more than video footage. They transported the couple to a military base, housed and fed them, and gave them an online connection. After a month, Hand and Neal hopped back on Facebook to tell family and friends that they are alive and well.
Neal wrote that the amount of attention she and Hand received was insane and added “I may delete my Facebook when I get home.”
The mom issued a statement:
I am so happy today that my son is well. Now our family will have to process all of this, and I think this will take some time. I can’t wait to see Garrett and Jamie walking off the plane and into my arms.
Can we judge this mom for worrying about her son?
It’s a terrible shame the Peruvian authorities wasted time and money looking for people who weren’t even missing and that family and friends and the entire world were led to worry over this couple who was simply exploring the depths of the Amazon. But I can’t judge, as I’m a mother of young kids and don’t have the experience parenting a 20-something. I hope that by the time my kids turn 18 I’m able to let go and give them the independence they need to explore the world on their own—without reporting back to me on a daily basis through social media. I certainly don’t want to be one of those moms who demands that her college kid call home every day. Kids need freedom to grow, fail, learn, discover, succeed.
But I also know the terrifying feeling when you think your child is missing. When my son was 3 years old, I took my eyes off him for two seconds while shopping at Target and he wandered off. He was “lost” for what seemed like an eternity though it was probably only 5 minutes. I quickly recruited everyone in line at a dressing room to look for him and notified a Target employee. I cried out his name, tears streaming down my face, until I found him underneath the rack where I was looking at clothes. The concern around losing a child is intense and overwhelming and I think that fear can probably be ignited easily whether your child is 3 or 25. If my son were traveling around Peru, sending me emails daily, and then suddenly the communication stopped, I’d probably be concerned too.
