A Singaporean woman who went missing nearly five years ago has been reunited with her son after her plight was reported in an Associated Press story about people who sleep at 24-hour McDonald’s outlets in Hong Kong.
Mary Seow disappeared after selling off the family home in Singapore. Family members reported her missing, but her whereabouts were a mystery until she was quoted in a Nov. 12 story about people known as “McRefugees.”
Seow was just one of an untold number of homeless and working poor who spend their nights at the 120 McDonald’s restaurants open around the clock in Hong Kong.
However, her tale caught the attention of family members, the Singaporean government and concerned citizens, who worked swiftly to reunite the widow with her only son.
“I don’t expect that I’ll go back so fast. Until now I’m still, like, dreaming,” she said on Saturday at Hong Kong’s airport as she was preparing to board a flight back to Singapore with her 28-year-old son, Edward Goh.
Seow had a surprise reunion the day before with her son, who had flown to Hong Kong to find her and bring her back home. She said her ordeal began when she was swindled by Chinese whom she met at a church in Singapore. They persuaded her to sell her house and go with them to China to invest the money in their transport business, but when she arrived she realized it was all a scam.
She decided to stay in China and try to earn back some money, including by working as a street sweeper. She eventually ended up in Hong Kong, where she has spent the past three months living on the streets and finding some work doing what is known as “parallel trading,” carrying diapers, baby formula, chocolate and other branded goods across the border to resellers in mainland China.
Seow said that she had not wanted to return to Singapore because she was mortified that she had lost the family home and did not want to face her son.
That is why she had “mixed feelings” even after reuniting with her son, she said, adding that “I feel happy and I feel a bit of guilty conscience.”
Ahead of his departure, Goh said that he had “very strong and mixed” emotions, but added that there would be “no drama” and that they would “definitely not talk about the past.”
“I just want to bring her home,” he said.
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