A mother and father who lost contact with their son in 2022 say they’re grateful for a Dawson City, Yukon man’s efforts to help them learn his fate, ultimately bringing them closure after a four-year-long mystery.

According to Heidi and Terry Van Roon, their son Karl arrived in Dawson in April 2015. He worked different jobs around town until he moved to Keno City, Yukon in 2016 eventually leaving the territory sometime between February and March 2021.

The Van Roons said their son never liked to stay in one place for long, so he eventually made his way to Texas in 2022 with his sights set on hitchhiking to New Mexico. That’s the last time they said they heard from Karl.

Dawson resident Jordan Nicurity told CBC News that he was on vacation in Vietnam last month when a conversation with his friend about Van Roon’s story sparked the idea to use reverse image search to see if he could find anything.

“One got a hit,” Nicurity said. “The rest were just referring to other publicly available ones, but one site came up with this picture that I’d never seen before.”

Nicurity said the photo he saw “definitely wasn’t any of the nice, smiley” photos he had seen posted to date.

The photo was featured on a news article published on June 8, 2024 by a newspaper in Brazil called A Tribuna.

The article described a foreigner who was homeless and in extremely rough shape.

Nicurity said he copied the photo from the site and used the reverse image search again to cross-reference it, and the results led him back to publicly available pictures of Van Roon.

Days later, Nicurity contacted Heidi and Terry Van Roon with his discovery.

“They were pretty sure it was him,” Nicurity said. “I was so nervous to give them a call. That was a pretty intense phone call for me.”

Heidi and Terry said as soon as they were contacted by Nicurity, they were certain the photo he shared was their son.

“He sent us the image, and we said, ‘One hundred per cent this is our son,'” said Heidi. “This is Karl. What the heck is he doing in Santos, Brazil?’ As a mother your instinct is I’m getting on a plane. I’m going to stomp through the streets and call out his name and say, ‘Karl you’re coming home.'”

The Van Roons contacted the A Tribuna newspaper, the Canadian Consulate and Brazilian officials to get more information as the article had been published two years earlier.

Heidi said the chief of police in Santos notified her and her husband that an incident had occurred with the man in the article and requested fingerprints to be sent to confirm the man’s identity.

The family also received a copy of the police investigation and the coroner’s report.

The coroner’s report, dated June 10, 2024, said an incident occurred the day prior.

“The forensic examination revealed no external or internal traumatic injuries,” it read.

“Toxicological analysis was negative for alcohol and commonly screened drugs of abuse. Internal examination identified pulmonary thrombi, leading to the conclusion that the cause of death was pulmonary thromboembolism resulting from biodynamic physiological mechanisms. “

Heidi told CBC News the fingerprint analysis also confirmed the man was in fact their son Karl.

The news has the Van Roon family feeling both terrible sadness and a great sense of closure because they no longer need to wait vigilantly for news, they said.

“For example, any phone call that comes in, you answer it,” Heidi said of the period prior to learning of Karl’s death.

“It’s a phone call from Texas. It’s a phone call from Ottawa, and it’s telemarketing,” Terry added. “And it drives you crazy”

“And they are selling you an offer or they’re doing a poll ….and the sinking that happens,” Heidi said. “It’s not Karl. And now I don’t have to answer those calls anymore. If I don’t recognize the number, I am going to be free to just let it go to voicemail.”