A Grande Prairie woman’s attempt to find her biological father has brought her search to Airdrie. Chanel Hornak has been looking for her estranged father, Vaklav Hornak, for more than a decade, after she left home at the age of 15. “I moved out when I was really young,” said Hornak, who is now 27. She added her childhood was tumultuous and claimed her mother “always kind of hid that I had a real father.” She said her biological father hasn’t been in her life since she was two or three. “When I moved out, I decided to do some searching, but nothing really came about,” she said. She said her search has proven difficult, as she only has a few photos of Vaklav, and he does not appear to have social media accounts. “I’m Polish, and I know he’s from Czechoslovakia, because my mom is an immigrant and so is he,” Hornak said. “I’m pretty sure he goes by a different first name – I think he goes by either Walter or Vak, because people don’t understand his first name.” Last November, Hornak posted about her search on Facebook, and it received more than 580 shares. Since then, she said, she’s received leads from people claiming they’d spotted him in Airdrie. Some said they knew him several years ago, while others claimed they saw him as recently as within the last month. “There are a lot of people messaging me saying they worked with him in 1999 or 2000, but nobody has his current contact information,” Hornak said. “But everyone has been telling me he’s in either Airdrie or Fort McMurray.” Hornak was born in Calgary, but said her mother sent her to live in Poland for two years when she was a toddler. She said she’s not sure exactly when or why her parents split up, but her mother was living with a new man in Vancouver when Hornak returned to Canada. “I believe I was two or three the last time [my father] was in my life,” Hornak said. After returning to Canada, Hornak said she spent most of her childhood in Penticton, B.C., with her mother and stepfather. She said her mother refused to give her information about her father’s whereabouts, even though, Hornak said, Vaklav was paying child support. “I would look through photo albums and be like, ‘who is this guy?’ and [my mom] would say, ‘He was my best friend,’ when it turns out it was really my dad,” Hornak said. “The more I kept digging, the more the pictures kept disappearing.” Though Hornak said her surname was changed to Tomsczyk when she was 12, she now chooses to go by Hornak, as it's the name on her birth certificate. Hornak moved from Penticton to Grande Prairie about a year ago, where she now works for an insurance company and where her fiancé lives. She’s hoping her lengthy search will prove to be a positive one. “I’d really like to reach out to [Vaklav] to see if he wants to be my father and have a connection with me,” she said. “I don’t think he realizes that I’m looking for him. “I just want to say hi and give him the option. If he wants to be in my life, I would really like that. If he doesn’t, then at least I know I did everything [I could].” Anyone with information on Hornak’s father can contact her at facebook.com/chanelanna
