She sent a DM after noticing stranger's peculiar nose on LinkedIn. It was the end of a 70-year search

When 31-year-old Sammy sent a message to Michael Bardsley on LinkedIn, Gill Thompson, her mother, didn’t know that she was about to reunite with her distant half-brother. 73-year-old Thompson knew that she had a half-brother with her surname, but after making several attempts to track him down, she had lost hope. Thanks to LinkedIn and a characteristic “family nose,” her daughter tracked him down after they spotted him in a bowls tournament in August last year, according to June 2026 reports by The Sun.

Never had a daddy

Now a granny of four, Thompson grew up in Llandudno, North Wales. Her parents, Joyce Priestley and Colin Bardsley, got married in 1952, and just when Joyce was pregnant with her, Colin divorced her and moved out. While other kids at her school talked about their mom and dad, Thompson only talked about her mom and nanna, her maternal grandmother. “I was just happy, and I never thought about it,” she recalled.

In 1986, her mom passed away, and Thompson stumbled upon a photograph of her parents’ wedding, per The Mirror. This was the time when she came across her father’s face for the very first time. “I was amazed and excited to see it. He looks quite like me,” she described, recounting the moment. 27 years ago, at a time when the internet wasn’t a thing, she got her first home computer and started scouring databases of birth, marriage, and death records, hoping to track her dad. But after the death of her husband, Ian Hainey, in 2004, she put the search on hold. 

Thread of connection

Her hopes revived when she was 25 years old. She received a Christmas card from her paternal granddad that told her that her father was in Cape Town, South Africa, and had a son named Michael. After almost eight decades of separation, the siblings were about to meet. Thompson learned that an opponent in the Colwyn Bay Crown-Green Bowls Festival carried the last name Bardsley. Sammy found a LinkedIn profile by the name of Michael Bardsley and sent him a direct message with her phone number. "Sammy was sure it was him. She said we have the same nose. It's the same nose my dad had, and my son has it too," Thompson said.

Long-awaited reunion

In September, Sammy received a call from Bardsley, which confirmed his identity, and they finally got on a FaceTime chat. Bardsley had known that he had a half-sister, but lacking the resources to track her, he never tried anything. But after discovering that he was found by her, he was beyond delighted. "He said, 'This is the most wonderful thing ever,' and it was,” Thompson described. "We talked for ages. We both laugh a lot, and we're both into sport, and both work in sport." On June 8, the two experienced a heartfelt reunion at Colwyn Bay railway station in North Wales. As Bardsley’s train approached the station, emotions welled up inside her.

Reality sank in

The strikingly beautiful reunion of Thompson and Bardsley is just one of the many. Hundreds of thousands of people use the internet to track down their birth families and long-separated relatives. Research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, cited by the University of Michigan, reported that 24% used the internet to search for family history. According to a Pew Research Center survey, about one in seven US adults (15%) report having used ancestry and internet services to explore their ancestral origins. 36% of them say they have used these services to connect with relatives they might not have known about.

In this case, Bardsley became a jump-off point for unveiling a whole lot of the family tree to Thompson. She discovered that her father had a sister with three children, her cousins named Jacqueline, Nicola, and Alison, from Great Yarmouth, Northwich, and London, respectively. Fast forward to the present day, the siblings regularly text each other and host meet-ups. “We are both delighted,” Thompson exclaims. "This wouldn't have been possible at all without the Internet."

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