Christmas miracle: Mom who thought son dead finds him 12 years later in France

American college student goes missing in France shortly before he was expected to return to US

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A Scottish woman is celebrating a Christmas miracle after learning her son, whom she believed was dead for over a decade, is still alive and may soon return home. 

“I can’t believe it,” Joyce Curtis, who lives in Glasgow, told The Herald newspaper. “I thought with COVID and everything that has gone on, I thought he was dead. I grieved for him.”

“When I got the call to say he was alive I just went into shock,” she continued, saying she cried all day after learning the news. “Then, of course, I phoned my mother and I phoned my brother and I phoned my daughter to tell them.”

“Everyone is asking after him now. Nikky is a good boy. The feeling is that I still can’t believe it.”

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Curtis filed a missing person report in 2009 after not hearing from her son, Nicholas, for some time: He had traveled to Europe to find work, and she had last heard that he was hitchhiking across Spain and France. 

© Credit: SWNS Glasgow, Scotland, mother Joyce Curtis with a photo of her son Nicholas who was recently found in France. Credit: SWNS

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The British Consulate in Paris contacted the Curtis family in 2010 to inform them that their son was in a hospital. The couple flew over to France to visit him – the last time they would see him until 2022. 

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Curtis believed it was clear that her son had spent time “living rough” on the streets of Paris.

© Credit: SWNS A mother, who presumed her son was dead after he went missing over a decade ago, has hailed a “miracle” after discovering he is alive and well. Credit: SWNS

After that, Nicholas just “disappeared again,” even though the consulate said it would put him on a flight back to the U.K. 

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“I was expecting him home at Glasgow at a certain time,” Curtis explained. “I worked at the Southern General Hospital at the time. I was waiting on him coming home and there was no sign.”

© Credit: SWNS Joyce Curtis believed that her son Nicholas had passed away as she had not seen or heard from him since 2010. Credit: SWNS

Curtis said she called every airport to see if her son had gotten on a flight, but got no confirmation and heard nothing further for over 10 years – until the week of Christmas 2022. 

Curtis lost her husband back in June of this year and resigned herself to the idea that her son was gone, too, when she received a call from the British Consulate in Paris to learn that her son had been hospitalized again. 

“It’s like that film ‘Miracle on 34th Street.’ It’s like a miracle,” she said. 

She has started to make arrangements for his return, but she does not want to build her hopes up until he is back in Scotland. She even hopes to visit Paris, so she might see him once again before his return.