“He was only three when I last saw him. I can still see his face and curly head of hair … Almost as clear as yesterday.”
Jonathan, Hope Holland’s son, was taken from her more than 2 decades ago. In 2000, when he was just a toddler, his father, Hope’s ex-husband, suddenly vanished with him. Hope of course threw herself into finding her taken child
“The only focus I had during those first three years was finding my son. How I went about looking for him is a complete blur, but that was the only thing of importance to me.”, Hope said.
Despite that, for years, the trail went cold.
It wasn’t until 2006 that Hope caught a major break. The investigator on the case managed to track her ex-husband to San Diego, California.
It looked like Hope would be reunited with her son after several years but that didn’t happen.
The unthinkable happened when the investigator working the case disappeared unexpectedly. Hope waited months for a replacement, and that person adopted an alarming tactic for making an effort to recover her missing son: directly notifying Hope’s ex of the investigation, and requesting that he contact the District Attorney’s Child Abducti0n Unit.
“I begged him not to do that,” said Hope, who feared such a move would only cause her ex to cross the border into Mexico. And that, sadly, is exactly what happened.
Despite such a devastating setback, Hope continued to attempt to pursue leads about Jonathan’s whereabouts whenever she could over the next decade. However, Hope was still the single mother of her older son, Jacob. She had to work hard to support her household, leaving less time to devote to finding Jonathan.
In 2015, something remarkable happened — a chance discovery that would change everything.
While Hope was signing up for an online video training session, she was prompted to “like” the company’s page. She initially thought it was somewhat of a nuisance, but after following the instructions, a slew of photos popped up on her screen… and one of them caught her attention.
That was a picture of her sons Jonathan and Jacob as small children in the bathtub — a photo that she herself had taken!
Hope described her reaction moments after realizing that, quite by chance, she’d found her missing son. “Tears uncontrollably fell down my face, my hands were shaking, my body was shaking.” But what next?
She noticed that someone else had liked his photos. It turned out that person was good friends with her son. She asked him for Jonathan’s contact information and she learned her son was all too eager to reconnect. Three days later, Hope spoke to Jonathan for the first time in 15 years.
The two agreed to meet on July 1, 2015. Finally, after 15 long years, Hope was able to wrap her arms around her long-lost son.
“I’m so happy,” Hope told ABC 10 when asked about the reunion, “And it’s a miracle. [I] never thought this would ever come.”
As Jonathan was still a high school student in Mexico, he vowed that once he finished classes, he’d move back to California to live with Hope. Jonathan kept his promise when he successfully moved back home in the fall of 2016.
