“Do you know who I am?”
An elderly woman who says her name is Sandra Thorpe is asking this question because she wants someone to come forward and confirm that she is who she says she is.
Thorpe has no identification card, or birth certificate, and does not know her age, her parents or relatives. She says she does not know where she was born.
For more than a year she has been seeking the assistance of electoral officer of the Electoral and Boundaries Commission, Charles Bostic, as well as other officers of that department, to find her identity.
Yesterday Thorpe, accompanied by Bostic, visited the NATION to tell her story with the hope that someone would recognize her.
Bostic said that Thorpe came to the Electoral Office over a year ago to get her ID after she was refused medication at the Edgar Cochrane Polyclinic in Wildey and was told she needed official identification.
Bostic said that since there was no record of Thorpe at the Electoral and Boundaries Commission, she was sent to the Barbados Registration Department to have a birth certificate issued, but there is no record of her there.
“In order to get an ID card you need a birth certificate,” Bostic said.
Bostic said that initially someone was assisting Thorpe with getting medications, but it came to a point where that was discontinued.
Fortunately, she has no health problems requiring supplies of medication.
Thorpe has no coherent memories of her childhood and most of the people who recognize her now only know her as an adult and cannot confirm her age or if she has any relatives.
“In order for her to get a card she would need someone who knows her well from her early years and satisfactorily prove her date of birth,” Bostic said.
Thorpe lives at No. 19 Stratford Hill, The Pine, but said she grew up at Water Mill Avenue, Bayville, St Michael.
Several visits to Bayville have not helped.
According to Thorpe, she was raised by a Violet Thorpe, who was not her birth mother and who is now dead.
“The woman tell me that a lady bring a child and gave her and say she would come back for the child, but she never did,” Thorpe said.
Thorpe said she went to Eden High School in Beckles Road but no one seems familiar with the name of the school.
She said she had no children and never held a job.
Bostic said that though Thorpe cannot remember much, her story has remained consistent over the year in terms of the names she recalls and the places she lived.
“We have been trying to make connections through our database but it is becoming futile. We have tried the archives; we have tried everything, so the newspaper is my last resort,” Bostic said.
