KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A Missouri man has been located in Syria after being imprisoned for months, and now his family is pleading for him to come home.
Pete Travis Timmerman — who goes by Travis — was found outside the Syrian capital Thursday.
Reporters found him walking barefoot and free from imprisonment after the overthrow of Syria's president over the weekend.
But his family says they didn’t even know he was in Syria.
Last they knew, he was in Hungary, which is what was on the missing persons report his stepfather, Richard Gardiner, filed.
"After the first week, then I’m like, 'OK, there’s WiFi everywhere,'" Gardiner said. "I’m like, 'If you can’t find WiFi, there’s something wrong.'"
He says Timmerman told his family he was going to Europe to write about the churches there.
To them, that made sense, considering his passion for writing.
Gardiner says Timmerman was living with he and Timmerman's mother, Stacey, in Urbana, Missouri, before he left town for Europe.
"[I was] afraid he might get hurt," Stacey Gardiner said.
She says the last time she saw Timmerman in person was on her birthday on March 27.
When he was in Prague and then Hungary, Gardiner says he called frequently — at least three times a week.
"[He] called me end of May and says, 'Mom, I’m gonna be somewhere where I won't have no internet. And I said, 'How long, a week or two?' And he said, 'I don’t know, but I’ll give you a call.' And that’s all I know."
That was seven months ago.
"After my daughter had her baby in June, we was getting worried, and my husband and my son emailed him, and he never got back with us," Gardiner said. "I called him, texted him — never got back with me or the rest of the family."
Not only did he miss the birth of his niece, but also his stepfather's Leukemia diagnosis.
"Big changes while he was gone," Richard Gardiner said.
Gardiner says the Missouri State Highway Patrol has been "incredibly helpful" in updating his family on the status of Timmerman's whereabouts, and even told them that he got on a plane to Syria last month and that Timmerman's phone had been taken and used to scam people.
They also learned that money was being taken out of his checking account.
But Thursday's news still came as a shock, as they found out with the rest of the world about where their son was.
Gardiner says he was up early when he got a call about Timmerman around 5:30 a.m.
"I'm thinking, 'OK, this is a bogus call,'" Gardiner said. "And then Good Morning America called me when I got out of the shower, and I was like, 'OK, let me get the TV on and go to the world news,' and I was like, 'OK, that’s him.'"
Suddenly, all his emotions rose to the surface.
"I was bawling," he said. "I call her up, and I’m like, 'It's really him,' and we were both in tears. So emotional. Thinking the worst after this much time, you’re thinking, 'Will we ever see him again, will we find him?'"
His mother was crying too. She was driving on her way to an appointment in Kansas City when she got the call from her husband.
"I had happy tears. I was excited. It was a relief to find out he was still alive because he’s my baby," Gardiner said. "It’s just wonderful to find out he's OK. 'I’m hoping he’s still OK. I was waiting for this for a long time, and it is a relief, but I wish he'd call me and tell me he's OK."
Neither she nor Richard have heard from Timmerman since his release.
When approached by reporters Thursday morning about contacting his family, he said, 'No, I'm OK for right now.'"
But if he does call, his mother says she already knows what she'll say.
"I love you, and I'd love for you to come back," Gardiner said. "You got family over here that loves you so much."
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