The pic posted on Twitter
A TOURIST unable to get a good mobile phone signal in Donegal took to Twitter instead to help find her missing mother.
Joanne Mehaffey, from south Belfast, tried desperately to ring friends after her mum Diane went missing earlier this week. Her mother suffers from Alzheimer’s Disease.
But because she couldn’t get a good enough signal to make lengthy calls, she posted as SOS on Twitter instead – and her mum was found nine hours later wandering a suburb with her dog.
She urged her followers to retweet and share the picture message.
She tweeted: “This is my mum & she’s gone #missing. Help try & bring her home safe #missing #belfast #plsRT #alzheimers”.
Joanne said: “I love Twitter and I love Facebook and I needed as many people as possible to see mum’s picture to speed up her being found. I knew I needed to do it sooner rather than later.
“While she would not have necessarily wanted everyone to know that she was suffering from Alzheimer’s, I needed her brought home, and if that meant I needed to share it, I was going to share it.
One of the family’s other dogs which was with Diane.
“I knew that Twitter was a powerful tool. I just needed one person to see her and that’s what happened.”
The message was retweeted hundreds of times – but crucially Lisburn woman Christina McStravick saw it.
“I was sitting about six o’clock in the living room, watching TV, and I noticed a woman walking past the window with two dogs,” she told the BBC.
“She seemed a wee bit dazed and kind of caught my attention but I didn’t think anything of it.
“Literally, 30 seconds later I was on Twitter. I saw that Oscar (Knox) had retweeted Joanne’s poster.
“I jumped in the car, drove round and drove slowly past Diane. I didn’t want to scare her but I realised it was her.”
She gently coaxed Diane into coming into the house for a cup of tea while her husband rang Joanne and the police.
“My husband gives me a hard time for going on Twitter too much, so he can’t do that anymore,” Christina said.
But Joanne has been overwhelmed by the response on social media.
“My mother had walked about eight miles. We would never have thought she was there.
“My husband says he’s a Twitter widow, but Twitter and the kindness of strangers brought my mum home,” she said.