Wichita man becomes chosen family, inspires producer to write award-winning movie

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct some of the details about the movie.

WICHITA, Kan. (KSNW) — Tracie Laymon grew up in Texas and made a lifelong connection with a family in Wichita. It all began on Facebook when Tracie was looking for her dad.

“My dad would sometimes get angry and disappear and not call me back or email me back, and one of these times, I thought, ‘Maybe he’s on Facebook,'” Tracie said. “I put his name into Facebook and accidentally friended another man with the same name in Wichita. And that man was kind to me just for the sake of being kind and ended up being kind of more fatherly than my dad had been to me at that time.”

Although they never met in person, Tracie’s friendship with Bob Laymon lasted nine years.

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“There was just a lot of healing that happened,” Tracie said. “For example, every year on my birthday, my dad never said happy birthday in those nine years, but every year like clockwork, it would say ‘Bob Laymon says happy birthday.'”

Tracie says she always wanted to say thank you to Bob for the impact he had on her life.

“At first, I was like, ‘Oh gosh! I want to tell him what he meant to me, and in front of his wife, Teri,’ and I was like, ‘but I don’t want them to think I’m weird, you know?’ So, like, how do I do this?”

She submitted a short film about Bob to the Tallgrass Film Festival in Wichita. She planned to finally meet Bob and Teri in person by inviting them to the screening and then telling them thank you. But her short film wasn’t accepted to the festival, so she wrote a short version of the script to give Bob as a thank you.

“I was actually on his Facebook to try to say, ‘I have a present for you,'” Tracie said. “And I saw a post that he had passed away. I was just consumed with regret because I was like, ‘I had nine years, and I never did this. I never did it in a way because I didn’t want it to end. I didn’t want him to think I’m weird and then it to end,’ but in the same way, I should have risked it. I should have told him.”

That regret turned into passion. She began writing about Bob again, this time as a feature-length film, not a short.

“I just decided to do whatever it takes to make this movie to tell him thank you and to tell people I felt like I had been blessed with such a gift that I owed it to share that.”

Tracie was not able to use Bob’s real name, so her movie is called “Bob Trevino Likes It.”

She submitted it to this year’s Tallgrass Film Festival and was accepted. The movie won the award for Best Narrative Feature. Everything worked out for the best.

“It’s so strange because if I had gotten into Tallgrass Film Fest with my short, there would be no feature,” Tracie said. “So it’s this strange thing of sometimes the rejection actually gives you another opportunity later and one that’s really meant for you, and sometimes what you need is right around the corner, just in a way you never expected that it would.”

Their relationship on the internet gave Tracie the family she always needed.

“It was this example that I experienced of small acts of kindness, changing my life and changing someone’s life,” Tracie said. “So I was like, ‘we need to all remember that we have that power.’ You don’t know what someone on the other side of the screen is going through. You don’t know what they’re dealing with, and so you can take five seconds to say something mean to them, or you can take five seconds to say something nice, and you might actually change their life.”

Although Bob is gone, his wife Teri and other family members are just as close with Tracie.

“I got to meet her, and they felt like family right away,” Tracie said. “The movie is about chosen family, like, ‘Oh, this makes sense.’ I feel like I’ve known them my whole life, which was really beautiful. We don’t always get the things we need in life the typical way, and we don’t always get them the way we think we will, but if we can just have faith that if we keep looking, and we’re open to love and connection, that we will find it. Sometimes family comes in the most unexpected ways.”

Teri describes Bob as friendly, outgoing, and caring.

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“It doesn’t surprise me that his kindness would spread or impact other people,” Teri said. “It was very touching, of course, knowing that Bob’s kindness could spread enough to inspire someone to write a film about it.”

Tracie says the movie is fiction, inspired by true life. “Bob Trevino Likes It” stars actor John Leguizamo as Bob and French Stewart as the hero’s father. It has won over a dozen awards at film festivals, including the San Diego International Film Festival, SXSW Film Festival, Nashville Film Festival, and Calgary International Film Festival.

It will be released in theaters in March.

If you would like to nominate a person or business for Positive Connections, fill out KSN’s online contact form.

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