Kelowna man returns to Ireland to find young woman from cafe to propose to her

Oh dude, don’t.  Quit while you’re ahead.

A B.C. dentist has embarked on a quixotic quest to find – and marry – a young  Irish woman he bumped into at a café while on vacation last year.

In July 2011, Sandy Crocker, 34, was eating breakfast in the Irish tourist  town of Ennistymon with his brother when he noticed a “striking” lady at a  neighbouring table. He waited until she had finished her meal to strike up a  conversation, but only long enough to chat about the weather and ask directions  to a local landmark.

“She never left my mind, so I decided why not go back and try to find her?”  he told the Irish Sun this week.

“Maybe it’s a shot in the dark, but if it is meant to be, if it’s fate, then  I might bump into her walking down the street or in a shop somewhere.”

The Kelowna dentist started his search this month in the rural County Clare,  where Ennistymon is located. Soon, he plans to move on to Cork and Belfast. His  elusive love interest is described as an Irish woman in her midtwenties with  freckles and reddish brown hair.

An Irishwoman with reddish-brown hair and freckles?  Well, that certainly narrows it down, doesn’t it?

On Wednesday, U.K. bookmaker Ladbrokes, Ireland, assigned 50/1 odds on Mr.  Cocker marrying the mystery lady, giving it a 4/5 chance that she is already  married. “It’s definitely a long shot travelling 8,000 kilometres to woo an  anonymous Irish girl with red hair and freckles, but there’s a good chance Sandy  could steal another Irish lady’s heart during his visit, so we’re offering 10/1  that he meets his future wife here,” said Ladbrokes spokeswoman Hayley O’Connor.

A guy that beta?  And how would he explain his trip to some other Irishwoman?  “Oh, I was looking for someone else, but I’d be happy to settle for you instead!”  FAIL.  Ladbrokes should give him only 100/1 odds, if that…

It is a bit “old-fashioned” to assume that a twenty-something Irish woman  would be single and ready to marry, wrote a young County Clare woman in an email  to the Post, asking that her name be withheld.

Indeed; the Irish have ditched the faith, and embraced the rest of the West’s notions of ‘progress’.

She also noted Mr. Crocker’s description is a bit vague. “If [he] had said  red then that would have narrowed down the population. Reddish brown? Not so  much!”

Exactly.

The unusual story has received wide play in Irish radio and newspapers. “I  think everybody’s quite shocked by it,” said Ciara Cummins, an account executive  with Ladbrokes, noting that the occasional commenter has described Mr. Crocker  as a “stalker.”

“He’s not technically a stalker unless she wants no part of him – obsessive  to be sure,” said Don Dutton, a domestic violence researcher at the University  of British Columbia.

“[She] might perceive him as a stalker – given that his perception of her is  based on so little information – on the other hand, she might feel flattered and  important to have had such an impact on someone,” said Kathryn Guthrie, an  Ottawa marriage and family therapist.

No, you were right the first time, Miss Guthrie; she’ll find him ‘creepy’, and not without reason, either…

Mr. Crocker’s dating profile at PlentyofFish.com (titled “Missing Person Please Help”)  details his July 2011 meeting with the mystery woman, including how he spent  hours searching for her through Ennistymon after their brief chat.

“My breath was taken away to the point of near suffocation. – She was gentle,  graceful, the kind of girl who would enter a shoe store and leave with brown  boots, [whose] mother probably thought blue glass was pretty and still  collectible,” he wrote.

The same dating profile also lists the results of Mr. Crocker’s online  “chemistry test,” noting that his lack of self-control makes him uniquely  susceptible to following his intuitions and to “give in to – temptations.”

No kidding…

It’s a lovely story – but the reality is that the woman is not a real woman  but a delicious confection,” wrote Montreal family therapist Vikki Stark in an  email.

“This story underlies what we therapists know – that relationships so often  germinate from an idealized vision of who you want the person to be,” she  added.

No doubt.

Speaking to the Sun, Mr. Crocker said he had prepared himself for the  possibility that she was already married.

“If I meet her again and it turns out she is married to a nice fella – the  kind of guy who gives her a hug if she is crying before he asks her what’s wrong  – then I don’t think I would have a problem with that.”

Put your balls in a vice, already; you’re done!

Reading this story was almost as painful as this Swingers scene was to watch the first time (and still is):