Paul Bishop had already given his dentures up for lost.
It was 2011, and the British tourist was enjoying a day of drinking with friends in Benidorm. Between pints, the last sip of cider didn’t agree with him, so he vomited into a trash can outside a pub and continued on to another bar. That was when one of his friends noticed that he was missing his teeth. They looked for them, but had no luck.
He had to finish his holiday without teeth, and even played toothless Elvis at a friend’s 50th birthday party. Back home, he spent around 750 dollars on a new set of dentures and never thought about the matter again.
Until this week, 11 years later, when a small blue envelope arrived from Spain with his name on it. Inside were his dentures, clean and in perfect condition. How did they find him, when he had changed address three times? Years ago, he had taken a voluntary swab test, and his DNA had been stored in a database. They contacted the British embassy, which tracked down his address.
Today, Paul, 67, a manager at a working men’s club in Stalybridge, plans to display the find at the club. “I’m surprised they went to the trouble of looking for me”, he said.