Did Facebook's 400 million users make it inevitable that the long-lost Balzer sisters would find each other? Or was it a case of Stacy's hand reaching into the social media haystack and finding the needle that was Deb?
Perhaps their reunion simply was, as Deb described it, "the darnedest thing."
The Balzer sisters' story is among a couple of dozen collected in "Facebook Fairytales: Modern-Day Miracles to Inspire the Human Spirit" (Skyhorse, $12.95) by Emily Liebert. While Facebook's content is more associated with foiled job interviews and antics that should have stayed in Vegas, Liebert says that it's also an engine for good.
Last year, the site created a page called Facebook for Good, where members share stories of how they used the site as a tool in efforts that range from raising money for charities, to helping acquit the wrongfully accused, to finding lost cats.
Or lost sisters.
Deb Balzer, 48, lives in Minneapolis. But her story began in 1961, when she was born in Dunkirk, N.Y., near Buffalo. Two years later, sister Renee was born. Three years later, their parents divorced.
"During that era, divorce was a disgrace," said Balzer, especially so in a predominantly Catholic town. Several years later, their father left town and remarried.
When Balzer was 14, she tracked him down, only to learn that she and Renee had another sister named Stacy. But that marriage also had ended in divorce and the conversation stopped there. "Nobody said anything, so nobody ever said anything," she said, summing up the family dynamic. Yet she couldn't shake what she'd learned.
