A young woman named Olivia Bean has been searching for her fourth-grade teacher for 22 years. The problem was that she couldn’t remember her teacher’s name. What she could remember was how much that teacher changed her life, so she became determined to find her.
As a student, Bean had lived in a motel with her mom. She recalled taking multiple city buses each morning to get to school. When her teacher heard, she began driving Bean home every day. Bean shares in a post on Pls.Find’s (@pls.find) Instagram, “Those car rides with my teacher were a few minutes out of the day where I could just be a kid, and not be wondering about all these uncertainties in my life. I was just talking to an adult who cared about me and what my thoughts were.”
How would she find her?
Bean was so inspired that she also became a teacher. She felt it was important to find the woman who had cared for her so lovingly and thank her. But how? The school was demolished many years ago, and the records were lost. The only other memory that stood out was her teacher’s yellow VW Bug.
That’s where Pls.Find came into play. Conceptualized by Upworthy’s Head of Content & Innovation, Gabriel Reilich, the Pls.Find Instagram page is all about “Reuniting people with who and what matters most.” In collaboration with Upworthy’s Instagram, they relay how it all went down. “Our search for this public school teacher reached more than six million people. And after months of following your tips and leads…we found her. One anonymous tip was the breakthrough.”
She remembered what mattered
The teacher’s name, as it turned out, was Beth Tanner. She was found in a memory care facility in Cleveland, Ohio. Pls.Find reached out, and although her memory was fuzzy, she absolutely recalled what mattered. “There was a lot she couldn’t remember. But her love for kids, teaching and that yellow VW bug…that stayed with her.”
Of course, they immediately shared the wonderful news with Bean and even bought plane tickets to Ohio so “she could say ‘thank you’ in person.” However, Tanner passed away “two days before their reunion.”
It was a tragedy, but the story was far from over.
They continued, “It just didn’t feel right for things to end like this. So we decided to take the funds set aside for the reunion and use them for something else…something that would honor Beth and her legacy.”
Dream into action
They put their dream into action. They bought as many backpacks and school supplies as they could and gave them to the kids in the neighborhood where Beth once taught. “That ended up being 100 backpacks. We gave them away just before the first day of school. We were down to the last few when a group of kids walked in. There were six of them. And we had exactly six packs left. It felt like it was meant to be. Like Beth was still making sure every kid had one less thing to worry about…just like she always had.” The Instagram carousel ends with a picture of Tanner and the words, “Thank you, Beth. 1947-2026.”
In just one day, the post garnered 100,000 likes and thousands of comments from people moved by the story and inspired to share their own memories. One beautifully writes, “If you don’t have a Beth, be a Beth.”
A teacher was so touched
This Instagrammer found her favorite teacher from first grade. “I found my favorite teacher from first grade 26 years later. She changed schools, countries, and continents. She touched my life and I had to say thank you!”
A teacher shares, “Burned out teacher here. Took a day off to reset. Thank you for the reminder that I may never know the impact I have on someone. (This) encourages me to try again tomorrow.”
This wasn’t the first time Pls.Find helped people reunite. The social experiment, as they call it, began with “one straightforward question: Can we use social media to catalyze a collective action rooted in empathy?”
As it turns out, it genuinely took a village to make a wonderful bit of magic happen. Joining kind forces, Pls.Find, Upworthy, and many of the people reading this very content came together to spark a little positivity in a world that feels increasingly chaotic.
Perhaps that spark will lead to many other sparks as people pay it forward for years to come.
