TWITTER REUNITES A HOMELESS MAN WITH HIS FAMILY! THERE'S HOMELESS PEOPLE ON TWITTER?

The homeless New Yorker who found his long-lost daughter using Twitter embraced her Friday after 11 years apart - and met his two grandchildren whom he never knew existed.

"This is amazing. I'm full of joy," said a tearful Daniel Morales, 58, moments after he laid eyes on Sarah Rivera, 27, in Bryant Park.

"This is a very significant moment in my life."

His daughter was equally shocked that they were back in each other's lives.

"I've been trying for years to find my father," Rivera said. "I'm so happy I have my dad. It's been rough not having my father."

The story of their miraculous reunion began three weeks ago, when a group of savvy interns started a project called Underheard in New York and gave Morales and three other homeless New Yorkers Twitter-equipped cell phones to document life on the streets.

One of Morales' tweets asked his more than 3,000 followers to find his daughter, whom he hadn't seen since she moved to New York from Puerto Rico with her mother in 2000.

Hours later, one of Morales' followers sent a Facebook message to Rivera in the hope she was the man's little girl.

"When I first saw the tweet I was like, 'This can't be,'" Rivera said.

"All these years I looked for him, and somehow he found me."

Rivera's children - Nevaeh, 4, and Akai, 1 - were too young to understand the significance of Friday's emotional get-together, but nonetheless they quickly took to their smiling grandfather.

Morales lifted Nevaeh into his arms, and the little girl held him by the cheeks, smiling and laughing.

"There's a saying in Spanish: 'La sangre llama.' It means you know by instinct that someone is your family," Rivera said.

Nevaeh and her grandfather played in the puddles and laughed together for almost an hour while TV news crews tried to capture the story, which first appeared in the Daily News.

"She is so cute," Morales said. "She looks like a Morales. She looks like my family."

"I'm so happy this happened. I never expected it," said Rosemary Melchior, 22, an intern at Bartle Bogle Hegarty advertising agency and co-creator of the Underheard in New York project.

"It really shows the power of social media and how it connects people."

Asked what's next for the family members, Rivera said they plan to "spend a lot of time together."

"We will bond and have a relationship," she said.

The road ahead for the family, though, likely will be difficult.

Morales is staying at a Manhattan homeless shelter, and Rivera and her kids live in a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Brooklyn.

"I just wish I had an apartment," Morales said. "I wish I had a place to take my family where we could live together.

"I only have $500 to my name," he said. "How am I going to get a place for us to live?"


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