USA player reunites with long-lost family after Seoul 2024 Homeless World Cup
|Jonathan Torres had the unforgettable experience of visiting the Korean capital for the Seoul 2024 Homeless World Cup. Images: Jonathan Torres
“My youngest brother wished that one day he could find his long-lost brother – which turned out to be me.”
Jonathan met his sister during his layover while proudly wearing his medal from the Seoul 2024 Homeless World Cup. Image: Jonathan Torres
For USA player Jonathan Torres, the flight home to New York from the Seoul 2024 Homeless World Cup was more nerve-wracking than the flight out. During his short layover in Texas, he was going to meet his sister for the first time.
She drove for 4-5 hours to see him, even though they would only have five minutes together.
Jonathan was separated from his mother as a child and had no idea he had any siblings or where his mother was.
Jonathan had been trying to find his family for years. However, he finally had a breakthrough while he was applying for his passport to travel to Seoul for the Homeless World Cup.
An Ancestry website that Jonathan joined in the hope “that it would reach my family somehow” would turn out to be the key. He found his second cousin on the platform and then they reached out on Facebook. Excited but uncertain if it was real, Jonathan sent Ziham Ascencio, Street Soccer USA New York Program Director an unbelievable message – “I think I just found my mom and I have a sister and a younger brother.”
“[My second cousin] had made her profile on behalf of my youngest brother who wished that one day he could find his long-lost brother – which turned out to be me. She then contacted me with my sister and my mother, who lives in El Salvador.”
Jonathan was really happy, but also uncertain if it was really them. Image: Ziham Ascencio
The chance to meet his sister was an incredible turn of fate as his flight home to New York from Seoul happened to connect through Texas.
“Like my mom told me, of all the 50 states where I could have made a connecting flight it happened to be Texas – the same state where my sister lives. It allowed the space if even for a moment to meet my sister.”
Meeting his sister, even if just for 5 minutes, is the start of Jonathan’s plans for a family reunion in El Salvador.
“Now that I have a passport I must travel to unite with my family.”
The Homeless World Cup, as well as enabling him to meet his sister for the first time, also gave Jonathan the chance to join a global football family – the Homeless World Cup family.
“Even participating in the Homeless World Cup, I found an international family and a sense of belonging and I have been bestowed a position as an Ambassador, which I now carry with me everywhere I go.”
Proudly wearing his Homeless World Cup medal as he met his sister for the first time, Jonathan’s Homeless World Cup legacy goes a lot further than the pitch.
The passport that he got to travel to Seoul will be the key to reconnecting with his family in El Salvador and will finally end a young boy’s years of searching for his mum.
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