Thursday, March 3, 2005 | 11:02 a.m.
Las Vegas resident Walter Porch is now thanking God that the air conditioning in his mobile home went out last summer.
The outage forced the 73-year-old double amputee to ask for help from local nonprofit group Working Together with Christmas in April, which led to him being featured in a Las Vegas Sun article as the organization's 1,000th client.
That article hit the Internet where it allowed Porch's long-lost daughter, Teresa "Lisa" Berggren, to learn her father's location for the first time in more than 50 years.
Separated by circumstances before she was even born, the two met for the first time Feb. 22 and have spent the last week catching up on five decades.
"It's just a miracle that we found each other," Porch said, his eyes tearing up as he clutched his daughter's hand. The pair were sitting side by side on the deck of Porch's mobile home near Boulder Highway and Sahara Avenue and could not stop beaming at each other.
"I know God had a hand in this -- there are so many different circumstances, so many coincidences that made this happen."
Berggren, 51, of Albany, Ga., said she nearly fell out of her chair when she came across the article online in January. She had been looking for her biological father since 1983, soon after receiving a letter from her mother, Teru Matsuda, detailing her relationship with Porch.
"I'm so happy to have found him," Berggren said, her smile almost identical to that of her father's.
Her star-crossed parents met, courted and fell in love when Porch, a petty officer second class in the Navy, was stationed at Pearl Harbor during the Korean War. Gone for long stretches of time, the then 20-year-old would stay with Matsuda when he was in port between 1951 and 1953.
Porch said he was excited when Matsuda became pregnant and did everything he could to marry her. It was at a time, however, when enlisted men had to ask their commanding officers for permission to tie the knot and Porch's commanding officer refused, Porch said.
Porch's persistence on the matter almost got him court-martialed, he said, and he found himself transferred to Midway and then to Guam.
"They flat got rid of me," Porch said.
When they parted, Porch said Matsuda told him that "even if we can't get together I'll still have a part of you the rest of my life."
When Porch finally got out of the Navy in 1955, all he had was the address where he had stayed with Matsuda in Oahu and he was never able to locate her, he said. The last letter he had received from her was a note informing him that his daughter, Teresa, was born on Aug. 10, 1953.
Porch said he actively searched for Teresa for 15 years, not stopping even after he married and had other children. Almost everyone he knew, from his clients at his auto repair shop in Sacramento to the students in the college courses he taught knew about his lost daughter.
Berggren picked up the search at age 30. Her mother had also married and had other children, and Berggren was adopted by her stepfather, but she remained curious about who her biological father was.
When the answers finally came in her mother's letter, Berggen said she knew she had to find him.
"My mother wrote in her letter that he (Porch) was a swell guy," Berggren said. "I figured that if he was such a swell guy he would want to know about me."
Berggren said her mother, who still lives in Hawaii with Berggren's adoptive father, gave her her blessing to search for Porch even as she decided to leave him in her past.
"I don't regret knowing him," Berggren's mother writes in the letter. "I don't regret having borne his child, and if you have some of his qualities I'm glad."
All Berggren had, however, was Porch's name, a 1951 photo of him in his U.S. Navy uniform, and a few sketchy details she gleaned from her mother. Without a birthdate or a Social Security number, finding the right Walter Porch was a long and arduous process.
Search and genealogy services and private investigators turned up several leads but never the one Berggren was looking for. Over the years, she narrowed the field to a Porch listed in Las Vegas, but a letter to a post office box came back as no longer active.
It was the newspaper article that made the difference, Berggren said, an article that might not have happened but for a series of unfortunate events.
Porch, for instance, said he would have been able to fix his air conditioning himself back in August if he hadn't lost both his legs to an artery disease in December 2003. He said he had to swallow his pride to call the Christmas in April people, who he saw help a woman in his neighborhood the previous summer.
It was out of pure gratefulness for that help that Porch said he agreed to speak to the media on behalf of the organization as its 1,000th client, and pure luck that he even was the 1,000th client in the nonprofit group's 12-year history of helping with home repairs for senior citizens or low-income Las Vegans.
"It was just a comedy of errors and circumstances," Porch said. "I think she (Berggren) was a major factor. She's like a bulldog."
After the article came out, it was Berggren's husband, Kenn, who first made the call to Porch to see if he might be the man they were looking for. Having suffered identity theft after a home break-in, Porch said he was "gun-shy" about this stranger asking him so many personal questions.
But as they talked, Porch knew that Kenn's wife had to be his long-lost daughter.
To describe their first meeting last Tuesday, Porch said, would be like describing "how big the moon" is.
Porch learned that his daughter had his eyes and his chin, and Berggren learned she inherited Porch's stubbornness, they said. Both share a love for peanut butter, which Berggren tests as a lab technician for Tara Food in Georgia.
Berggren was also able to meet siblings and an aunt she didn't know existed, and Porch was able to see photos of three granddaughters and a great-grandson he didn't know existed.
For Porch, the best part was just knowing that his daughter turned out so well, something he had worried about for decades.
If his health cooperates, Porch said he wants to fly to Georgia and meet them in person.
"You couldn't write a better ending to a story like that," Porch said.
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