Fact is stranger than fiction: Long lost relative turns up on TV show and is reunited with her family

Fact is stranger than fiction: Long lost relative turns up on TV show and is reunited with her family

Sanook reported on a story that they said proved that fact is stranger than fiction. 

A family of 6 siblings who live in the Bang Khen area of northern Bangkok appealed to the Paveena Hongsakul Foundation after the youngest of the siblings saw an elder sister on a TV show.

Dokmai who had been suffering with a mental disorder had been missing for 27 years.

Now she was on TV with a man who said he was a fortune teller. Dokmai was mentally ill and paralysed and the couple were appealing for donations from the public via the TV show. 

The youngest sibling immediately told her relatives that she had seen Dokmai, who was the fifth child of seven. 

Dokmai had disappeared in 1993. The family had been told that she had been seen getting on a bus. All their efforts to find her came to nothing and they had all but given up hope of seeing her again. A missing person's report was made but the Bang Khen police failed to find her.

Two years prior to her disappearance she had developed depression and stopped speaking. Medical intervention improved things slightly but she was still only occasionally speaking. 

After she was seen on TV the family contacted the TV station and asked for how they could contact the couple on the show and donate money. They sent 5,000 baht then secretly arranged with the man who was living with their sister in Din Daeng to have a fortune telling. 

They went to an impoverished hovel where the man gave them their reading while Dokmai was out back. When his attention was diverted they discovered that 90,000 baht in donations had been received by the couple in a bank account under the name of their sister. 

The fortune teller told the family that up to now he had been unable to help Dokmai as they were too poor. Some 20,000 baht had been removed from the account. The family thought that he was taking advantage of her and she would be better off back with them.

The family went to Paveena who contacted the Bang Khen police and they all went to Din Daeng where it was amicably agreed that Dokmai would return to her family.

Since then she has been taken to mental health care personnel and physiotherapists and is showing genuine signs of improvement.

The family plan to visit Paveena together to thank her and the foundation when the Covid-19 crisis has abated. 

They are thrilled that their whole family is now reunited. 

Source: Sanook