After hearing one bargoer’s epic love story, a bartender on TikTok turned her investigative skills on and found a man’s long-lost love on Facebook. She couldn’t have predicted what they’d discover.
Now, the former bartender is asking the internet to do its thing and find the man she helped all those years ago. Like the rest of her TikTok audience, she’s eager for an update on whether the man ever reconnected with his lost love.
The viral video starts off with a TikTok stitch meme. A creator named Susi posted a video saying, “Call me crazy if you want, but I’ve never liked store-bought pesto.” A flood of people are now stitching Susi’s video, mocking her, calling such a mundane opinion “crazy,” and sharing their own truly shocking stories.
This is one of them. In the video, Chelsea (@herpaperroute) explains that back in her bartending days about a decade ago, there was a man who walked in looking disheveled and upset. He asked Chelsea to pour him a “really strong drink.”
The bar was pretty slow, so Chelsea had time to chat with the man. “What’s going on?” she asked in response.
And so the story begins. The man shares that every year, this day is tough for him because it’s the day he lost the love of his life 30 years ago.
He says that he and his then-girlfriend had an amazing relationship, but they had to keep it secret because the girl’s parents were strict and religious. Madly in love, the couple had plans to run off together and get married.
But one day, he dropped her off at her parent’s house, not knowing it would be the last time he’d see her. Days went by, and he hadn’t heard from her. Concerned, he started calling the parent’s house, but it wasn’t until weeks later that her mom answered the phone. She threatened him, telling him never to call the house again, and said if he showed up at the house, she’d call the police on him.
Young and scared, the man moved on with his life, never contacting her again.
“But he never forgets her,” Chelsea says in the clip.
As she asks him questions, Chelsea discovers that since then, he hasn’t tried looking for her and the woman is from an area not too far from where the man currently lives.
Together, they look her up on Facebook (the man hadn’t heard of the site before) and, to the man’s delight, find her. Then, going through the photos, they find out she has an almost 30-year-old daughter.
“This woman has the exact same face as this man who was sitting at my bar,” Chelsea said about the young woman.
She shows him this, and he starts to cry as he puts the pieces of the story together. It seems that the reason the parents banned the woman from seeing him was that she was pregnant with his child, and they wanted to keep him away as the father since they disapproved of him.
@herpaperroute Crazy pesto story! Susi stich. #susipesto #susistitch #susistory #crazypesto #crazystory #storytime #bartenderstories #storeboughtpesto #homemadepesto ♬ original sound – Chelsea | HerPaperRoute
In a follow-up video, Chelsea says she hasn’t seen the man since then but has always remained curious about whether he ever reached out and what has happened since. Enlisting the help of the internet, she greenscreens a list of details about the man and daughter, including roughly what they looked like, their ages, and where they were from.
So far, it doesn’t seem anyone has found them, but the internet has its fingers crossed.
Together, the videos have nearly 10 million views and over 6,500 comments.
“Boy math is being obsessed with the one that got away yet never bother to find them,” a commenter said.
“That’s literally so sad, she was still the love of his life after that long and potentially missed out on having a happy family,” another wrote.
Several people in the comments urged Chelsea to go through her Facebook search history and see if she could find the woman herself, but there’s yet to be an additional follow-up video.
The Daily Dot reached out to Chelsea for comment via email.