A pro wrestling promoter for 15 years, Dave Teixeira of Port Coquitlam is using his Japanese wrestling connections and his home computer to make a cottage industry of reuniting loved ones caught in the earthquake in Japan with their friends and families in Canada and the U.S.
"I just basically play operator for them," Teixeira explained Monday.
It all started when Teixeira began using Skype, the free internet phone service, to talk to friends in Japan, then post their updates on his Twitter account (twitter.com/davedotca). Soon, news organizations across the Lower Mainland took notice.
First, CKNW radio asked him to put them in touch with someone in Japan that they could put on the air.
But CKNW didn't have Skype and much of Japan's phone services were down, although internet access remained in most cities.
And so Teixeira devised a way to allow his friends in Japan to use Skype to call his home computer and then patch that Skype call to a third-party phone line, like the on-air phone at CKNW. By the time Teixeira posted how-to instructions for making Skype-to-Skype-to-phone calls on his communications blog (dave.ca), he had just about every newsroom in Metro Vancouver ringing his telephone.
"CBC, Vancouver Sun, Global, CFAX and a bunch of other media outlets... So I started connecting people for interviews with them and then regular citizens in Japan... somehow got my blog and then asked me to connect them with family members here."
That's when things became emotional, Teixeira said, as he found himself in the middle of three-way phone calls between people who hadn't heard from their relatives in Japan since before the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.
"One situation was a father speaking to his wife and a couple kids who hadn't heard from him for about four days," he said. "To be honest, I tried not to listen in. I tried to walk around my house and let them end the call naturally themselves and give them privacy."
That family was in Calgary and Teixeira said he has connected loved ones in Japan with family from as far away as Ontario, many on Vancouver Island and down into Washington State too.
But not all of the calls have been so urgent.
"Usually, the first two minutes of the conversation will often be about how Skype works, which is kind of funny. But, certainly just to hear the voice and to hear that they're fine - because in an email message you still have that level of concern."
tcoyne@tricitynews.com
