After thirty-four years of fruitless searching, the Salvation Army Christmas Kettle Campaign has brought two childhood friends together again.

The Boys and Girls Club's Teresa Pring, a Neighbourhood Hero from featured in this column a couple of years ago, grew up in Victoria as one of ten children.

Given this large family you can imagine that money was never available to buy things like toys and other frills. In fact clothing often had to be patched and patched again, and sometimes the soup pot was just a little thin.

That said life was still pretty good especially because Teresa had a best friend and together with another young girl they had a lot of fun. In fact rumour has it that they even had a little "devil" in them at times and that of course leads to even more fun.

Teresa's best friend's mom also played a large part in her childhood happiness.

"Any time I went over, and that was often," Teresa told me, "her mom would offer me food and when I stayed for dinner, my portion was usually quite large and seconds were always offered."

A lot of clothing came from her best friend's mom too, but she was never offered clothing that had been worn by her friend. Sensitive to the problems this might cause, she always made sure to pass on clothes that had been worn by her friend's older sister who went to another school.

Sadly soon after they started high school, her best friend moved and they lost touch with one another but they never forgot their special friendship.

A little over ten years ago the two friends just happened to move to Nanaimo and, although each knew of the other from a distance because of their community activities, years had changed their appearance and their last name, so they never made the connection to their childhood.

Teresa's first name had changed as well. When she was a child, she was known as Terri. This made it even more difficult for her friend to find her.

So the years rolled by and although they weren't consistently searching for one another, they never forgot their special friendship and periodically they would make another effort to reconnect.

Then last week it happened.

Teresa read in the paper that the Salvation Army needed more volunteers to support their Christmas Kettle Campaign and called to volunteer herself and her friend Liane Moores

Dawn Anderson answered the Salvation Army's volunteer line and before Teresa even gave he name, she mentioned that she always supports the Salvation Army because her grandmother played in a Salvation Army Band in Sweden and my father was a long time volunteer with the Salvation Army in Victoria.

"I might have known your dad," Dawn responded. "What was his name?"

When Teresa told her, shivers ran down Dawn's back.

"Yes I knew him," Dawn enthused. "His daughter Terri was my best friend."

"My childhood nickname was Terri," Teresa replied as shivers began to run down both of their spines.

Their personal need to make a difference for others had brought the childhood friends together again, and the first thing they each did as soon as they got off the phone was to call their mom to share their joy in finding one another.

Last Wednesday I was there to shoot a television feature for Shaw TV's The Daily on Channel 4 when the two old friends saw each other face to face for the first time in over thirty years.

Their childhood friendship rekindled immediately, and I've got a feeling that if they ever find their mutual childhood friend, the one that brought the "devil" out of them, it just might happen again ... all for a good cause of course!