CLEVELAND, OH – Nicole Delamotte got it in her mind to reach out to an uncle who didn’t stay in touch with “the family” and the family didn’t stay in touch with him.
The 30-year-old well-liked reporter hadn’t seen him in 15 years. Delamotte had fond memories of her father’s brother, so her Facebook post on October 14, 2018 describes a newly-found courage from being a reporter that emboldened her to go up to someone’s door she didn’t know and knock on it.
None of Delamotte’s encouragers suggested that she give pause and consider the privacy of a loner family member who had apparently shown no interest in her life over the past 15 years; or any other member of the family’s.
While Delamotte wrote about a “journalist’s courage,” the camaraderie that came from her friends weren’t really from working journalists.
Tim Novak, another friend, encouraged Delamotte to “Be bold” and that “fortune favors us.”
EJBNEWS reached out to Novak via Facebook messenger to learn how he knew Delamotte and why he encouraged her to pursue her reunion plan. We sought to learn if he was aware she had followed up on her words and that her “yes” to the idea she shared resulted in her death.

Novak shared that the two were “professional friends” and that he didn’t know Delamotte. He learned through business associates that “something was amiss” was her as the way he heard about her death. It was confirmed when he read her boyfriend’s post on “the wall.” The term “wall” is a reference to a Facebook post.
Novak said he was not at all aware of her relationship with the relative described in Delamotte’s post and had no personal knowledge of her family history. The “professional capacity” of their relationship came through his following her on social media. Novak said he thinks he may have met her but he’s not a journalist. He co-owns a beer brewery.
EJBNEWS supplied Novak with the words he used to encourage Delamotte and he wrote, “I feel like I did then.”
“It is very brave to try to reconnect with family. Who could have imagined that this would come of it?” he continued.
In a follow-up response Novak wrote that knowledge of the outcome of the decision made him sadder.
“I hadn’t even thought about this interaction until now,” he lamented.