Walking into an off-licence on a normal Monday and starting up a conversation with a stranger can change your life forever.
That is what happened to Oliver Archer, 21, who felt the ‘one in a million chance’ butterfly effect in action last week when he went to pick up a Vinted package from his local corner shop in Ladbroke Grove, west London.
Growing up without knowing his dad, Oliver would ask his mum about him ‘all the time.’ As a nine-year-old, he secretly searched his name on Facebook, which was one of the very few details he had.
Last month, Oliver’s DNA ancestry test confirmed that he is half-Turkish, but didn’t reveal anything about his father’s side of the family, and he almost gave up trying to find him.
Oliver told Metro: ‘My mum used to say my dad might be back in Turkey, or still back in London, so we never got the full details.
‘The only thing that I never knew about my dad was his name, that he was short, and that he was fully Turkish. That was all I ever knew of him.
‘I’ve always been interested in wanting to know him. I’m not here to demand an explanation or point fingers. I’ve always wanted to know him, and I was doing what I could to find him, but it was never successful.’
Oliver, who is an online fitness coach, continued his life and accepted that it might be difficult to ever find him, but he ‘never fully gave up.’
metro.co.uk
