10 years after accidental text, Wanda and Jamal are still spending Thanksgiving together

You may think you heard this heartwarming Thanksgiving story of chance meetings and found family 10 years ago, but you might not know that it’s still being written

You may think you heard this heartwarming Thanksgiving story of chance meetings and found family 10 years ago, but you might not know that it’s still being written.

In 2016, high school senior Jamal Hinton received a group text at his new number, sent by his grandma, inviting him for Thanksgiving. It sounds like an ordinary exchange, but Hinton was pretty sure something was amiss.

“Ninety percent of me already knew it wasn’t my grandmother,” he says, explaining that he knows she doesn’t text. He asked the sender to text a selfie to try to figure out for sure and received a photo of Wanda Dench, who is definitely not his grandmother.

Hinton describes himself as a fun-loving extrovert, so he sent a selfie back, definitely not of Dench’s grandson’s face, to let her know she had the wrong number.

“Can I still get a plate tho?” he joked.