Woman Finds Father Online After 48-Year Separation

A Simi Valley grandmother who uses her home computer for balancing a checkbook and making birthday cards went online for the first time this week and found her father, a man she was separated from 48 years ago.

Sharon Sylchak, 53, said she didn’t think much of computers when her husband brought one home a couple of years ago. But after taking a class and being encouraged by her kids and grandchildren, she tried a little word processing.

But Thursday morning she got bold and popped in a start-up disk touting free Internet use. Within three hours, Sylchak was reunited with her father, 75-year-old Earl David Papkie of St. Helen, Mich.

“I’m not a ‘religious’ religious person but I really credit modern technology and God,” Sylchak said Saturday.

A mother of four and a grandmother of six, Sylchak had unsuccessfully tried for years to find her father by calling information operators in her hometown of Detroit and writing letters to the Social Security Administration.

Sylchak’s mother, now deceased, met Papkie on a Ford assembly line and they were married in February 1944. Two months later, she was pregnant but the marriage had dissolved.

“She had been married twice and divorced twice and was considered the scarlet woman,” Sylchak said of her mother. “So when I was born, my father came and got me.”

Sylchak stayed with her father and his parents in Detroit for about five years until her mother returned to raise her. For 48 years, Sylchak lost touch with Papkie.

Using an online white pages service, Sylchak double-clicked and within seconds, Papkie’s name and number appeared.

“I called and got this answering machine,” Sylchak said. She left a message, went outside to talk to her husband and 15 minutes later the phone rang.

“He said, ‘Oh god, is this really you?’ ” Sylchak said.

Father and daughter swapped stories--he had remarried and retired and she had parented, worked and run for a city council seat. And both were anxious for a visit, she said.

She may have waited awhile to go online, but for a visit with her father, Sylchak didn’t waste time. A plane ticket is already in the mail to Michigan and Papkie will be here next Sunday.