Lovelorn Brooklyn Man Offers $100 Reward to Reconnect Before Vals Day With A Woman He Met Briefly Last Summer

Philippe Drice has plastered downtown Brooklyn with flyers in hopes someone can put him in touch with the young lady in time for Valentine's Day.

Once a thing you did when you lost a puppy, or child, a cash reward is being offered by a lovelorn Queens, New York soldier who may have raised the bar for star-crossed admirers everywhere.

Philippe Drice, 57, met the woman of his dreams last summer in Downtown Brooklyn and now, in flyers across the borough, he is offering a $100 bounty to anyone with information leading to the unidentified object of his desire.

“It’s an incentive,” said Drice of the $100 reward, a phrase rarely associated with romance. “I'm a businessman. I'm not asking anyone to do anything for free.”

The missed connection, according to Drice, began one summer afternoon last year while the younger woman was eating with a girlfriend at a Subway on Jay St. near Fulton Mall.

“She had those looks,” recalled Drice, still smitten. “Her whole demeanour was so fluid. Her tone of voice. Everything about her gave me an idea of a mermaid in my head.”

Asked how he failed to snag the woman’s digits, not to mention her full name, Drice, who is black and Haitian, offered a West Side Story spin to his Brooklyn tale.

Philippe Drice, 57, of Queens has plastered fliers across down town Brooklyn in hopes of finding a woman he met one afternoon.

“As you can see, it’s a bi-racial thing, and I guess we were both being careful," Drice said. "I think we were both being overly cautious.”

He has returned to the neighbourhood a couple of times a week for the past seven months but grew desperate, he said, choosing finally to type up the posters and attach a photo he and the woman took together that August day.

“I LOST A MERMAID IN DOWNTOWN Brooklyn,” as many as 75 flyers state. “Should YOU REUNITE US FOR VALENTINE’S DAY 2014... You COLLECT A $100 REWARD.”

This isn't the first missed connection to draw attention this week. A Chilean performance artist in Manhattan sparked a sensation when the “missedconnection” posters she taped up in subway stations swept across Twitter.

But Drice has taken his search a step further. He’s looking for anyone who can put him on the phone with the woman before Valentine’s Day. For that, he said, he’ll gladly fork over the bounty.

“It’s worth it to me,” said Drice, who claims to have served as a U.S. Army Ranger now living on a pension.

He has tacked the flyers to light poles, the door next to the Subway and anywhere else that looked promising between there and Court Street. “That’s not normal,” Drice fully acknowledged. “That’s an act of total desperation.”