Imagine living on the streets, homeless and hungry for 30 years. That was the life of a man named Mick Myers. However, everything was about to change and that was because of a sheriff of Alameda County deputy sheriff that decided to give the poor man a citation. Make sure not to miss #16, #12 and #11! When he was only a baby, Mick was adopted by a family that lived in San Leandro, California and seemed to be very kind and protective.
However, that wasn't true. Mick was a calm child that didn't get in trouble and had a lot of friends. His mother seemed to love him, but there was something that wasn't ideal in his family...
Even though his mother was taking good care of him, his siblings were ignoring him as if he wasn't even there. So he kept everything inside.
As he got older he also lost contact with his friends from school and started feeling lonely. And then something even worse happened!
At the age of 16, he learned that he was adopted and that made him distance himself from his siblings even more. However, the worst had yet to come.
His parents died! He was all alone and he was trying to survive as, after his parents' death, all of his siblings turned their back on him.
After he lost his family, Mick started working as a truck driver to make a living. This job wasn't ideal for him, because he spent hours o the road once again all alone.
However, it was good enough to give him the money he needed. Sadly, he lost his job and ended up alone without money once again.
Sadly, after losing his job, mick became homeless, begging and playing his guitar to make enough money to buy some food. However, the amount of money that he made wasn't enough to help him start a new life, so he ended up spending 30 years as a homeless.
“Most of the people just hurry by and don’t even give me a glance,” he said.
Deputy Sheriff Jacob Swalwell knew Mick as he was patrolling at the area he was begging for money. The sheriff had warned many times Mick that he should stop begging for money, but Mick had no other choice, so he continued.
As a result, the sheriff decided to ask Mick for his ID to give him a citation, but Mick didn't have one.
So naturally, the sheriff asked Mich why he hadn't one. And that was when he found out the truth. “I learned more, that he was disabled and had been homeless for 30 years.
He was not an alcoholic, he did not use drugs, he did not use tobacco. He was just a senior citizen on his own,” he said.
Jacob was touched with Mick's story, so he decided to help this man get an ID at first and the give him a second chance. However, that wouldn't be so easy as Mick would need a lot of papers that of course he didn't have.
But Jacob would do anything to help him.
At first Mick had to prove that he was a resident in the state of California, something that it was really difficult, as it required paperwork that Mick didn't have.
However, neither Mick nor Jacob were ready to give up.
After realizing how hard it would be for Mick to find his birth certificate that was essential to get an ID, the Sherrif asked for help to his colleagues and after a lot of searching, he found Mick's birth certificate that also had the name that his birth parents had given to him.
It was Gordon Michael Oakley.
Finally, Mick managed to get an ID! Everyone was really happy.
“We both realized at the same time that there is a real person there and not just the stereotype we saw when we first met each other,” he said. “We both realized at the same time that there is a real person there and not just the stereotype we saw when we first met each other,” Sheriff added.
Mick's story, draw the interest of Mark Askins, who was working at a non-profit organization named Miracle Messages, that was helping homeless people find their families again.
So, After Askins reached out to Mick, he gave him his permission to start investigating his past.
As Askins was searching everything about Mick's past, he came across with two names, “Wiley Albert Oakley” and “Maria Pauline Oakley.” As he searched further he found some microfilms that revealed a buried time of Mick's life.
It seems that MIck's mother had also a rough start in life. Married at 16, she moved with her husband, the sailor Wiley Oakley in Tennessee. Their house there was in very bad condition.
“The cabin was ramshackle. The cracks in the wall were so wide that snakes and other animals would come in,” she said. And because she had a baby she couldn't go to work.
She said to the reporters that her husband gave all of his salaries to his mother and that she gave her enough money just to buy milk.
She was forced to steal vegetables from the neighborhoods and that's why she decided to return to her mother, as she was also pregnant with a second child.
However, her problems didn't end there.
She gave birth to her second child, named Gordon Michael Oakley and when he was around two, they learned that he needed surgery at his stomach to survive and because his mother knew she wouldn't be able to afford the surgery she gave the baby to a family from the church.
After that reveal, Askins tried to truck down Mick's mother and thankfully he found out she was still alive and her address. It was a big moment for Mick.
He would be reunited with his birth mother. However, both the mother and the son needed their time, so at first, they talked through the phone.
When he arrived at the airport, a woman was waiting for him and when she explained to him that her name was Shannon and that she was his niece, it was all too much for him.
When he arrived at his mother's house, Polly run outside and hugged her beloved son! They were reunited after 65 years!
Everything was perfect and everyone was in tears.
Not only did Mick reunited with his mother, but he also found a big family, too. His mother had remarried and as a result, Mick had now a big loving family, that took him in their arms.
In the end, everything was as it should be.