Couple honored for helping reunite lost loved ones
Print Edition
A couple in northeast China’s Jilin Province was awarded a Good Samaritan award for helping more than 1,400 people find their lost family members.
At a ceremony held on Sunday, state broadcaster China Central TV included Zhang Baoyan and Qin Yanyou on its list of 10 people who “moved the nation” in 2015.
In April 2007, the couple, from the city of Tonghua, set up a website for people searching for their parents or children to share information. The free service exhausted all of their savings until donations from big companies poured in several years later.
“We have seen more than 1,400 reunions, but are still working on around 40,000 unsolved cases,” Zhang said.
Zhang said the idea was inspired by the couple’s own experience of losing their son briefly at an apartment store.
As well as Zhang, the website employs seven full-time workers, whose salaries are paid by the local government.
More than 170,000 volunteers across the country, divided into more than 100 groups based on their locations and professions, also help with investigations.
Police officers are important volunteers.
“It’s a great honor to help lost children get back home,” said Ding Chao at a police station in Luyi County, central China’s Henan Province.
Despite the successes, what Zhang remembers most is a failed attempt to save a 6-year-old boy who was abducted many years ago.
Cong Cong was abandoned by the person who bought him at a hospital in southeast China’s Fujian Province after being diagnosed with meningitis.
Zhang and volunteers rushed to the boy’s bedside with donations that enabled him to get an operation. They also offered clues to the police and helped capture the traffickers.
However, their plan to take the child to Beijing or Shanghai for better treatment failed because they lacked guardianship. Shortly after, the boy died.
“I prayed for him: ‘I hope you meet your mother in heaven, a place where there’s no pain,’” Zhang said.
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