DELRAY BEACH, Fla. — It’s been 20 years since a woman named Gladys mistakenly dialed Mike Moffitt’s Rhode Island number while trying to reach her daughter in Maryland.
The misdials continued for several weeks, usually with Gladys hanging up without speaking after realizing that she had, yet again, dialed the 401 area code instead of the 410 code needed to reach her daughter, WLNE reported.
Finally, “I said, ‘Hey, what’s your name?’” Moffitt told The Providence Journal last week. “And we started hitting it off.”
Over the next two decades, the calls became deliberate, with each inquiring about the other’s family from time to time but never chatting too terribly long.
So, when Moffitt’s family vacation and college scouting trip to Florida the week of Thanksgiving placed him within three miles of Gladys’ home, he knew it was now or never.
“I just said, ‘Hey, I’m Mike from Rhode Island,’” Moffitt told the newspaper about showing up on her doorstep, unannounced with a bouquet of flowers in hand.
>> Need something to lift your spirits? Read more uplifting news
“Her eyes lit up,” Moffitt said of his old friend, whose daughter actually helped him arrange their first in-person meeting.
And the first words out of Gladys’ mouth after physically laying eyes on “Mike from Rhode Island?”: “I’m blessed,” the Journal reported.
Moffitt and Gladys finally shared their first hug, the newspaper reported.
“There are incredible people in this World that are a wrong number phone call away,” he wrote on Facebook, sharing their special bond and long-overdue introduction.
My story of a wrong number.... Gladys...she continually called the wrong number 20 years ago (my number with a...
Posted by Mike Moffitt on Wednesday, November 24, 2021
©2021 Cox Media Group
