However, her birth mother did not want to discuss her father other than to say he was British, and the year he left New Zealand.
His name - Stanley Thomas Taylor - was on a hospital document from Sumner’s birth.
But given the name was so common, Sumner had a real challenge on her hands.
She went online and signed up to an ancestry website and supplied a DNA sample.
Soon enough, she connected with several second and third cousins and a first cousin.
Sumner was then able to ascertain that Taylor was born in Liverpool and later travelled to Australia and New Zealand.
He left New Zealand before Sumner’s birth and spent time in Canada, but was deported from there in 1958.
Sumner then turned to researching why had been kicked out of Canada, scouring Canadian newspapers for clues.
She told the Vancouver Sun she found an edition of their newspaper that mentioned Taylor’s name.
The newspaper, dated January 25 1957, also had a photograph of Taylor.
He appeared on the front page in the back of a police car, wearing a hat with part of his face obscured deliberately - assumedly because of crime reporting rules of the time.
The article said Taylor, a seaman, was 27 at the time and he had been charged with robbery.
Taylor had held up a bank but did not manage to get out with any cash.
The article stated that a “cordon” of bank staff surrounded him to “wall off his escape”.
He did not resist them, rather he “lolled lazily” against the counter.
Police arrested him at the scene and Taylor “had been tested on the drunkometer which showed a reading of .157.”
Sumner needed to confirm the man in the story was her father and her husband suggested she hire a private investigator.
But Sumner, a librarian, decided to do the work herself.
“Never underestimate the power of a librarian,” she told the Vancouver Sun.
“I had the patience and the persistence and I could think outside the box for where to look.”
The Vancouver Police Department confirmed Taylor’s 1957 arrest but could not provide Sumner with a photograph of the offender.
She contacted Immigration Canada and staff there dug out a document showing a deportee named Stanley Thomas Taylor had been incarcerated at Stony Mountain prison in Manitoba.
Prison archivists were then able to confirm that same Taylor had been transferred from a prison in British Colombia.
But still, no photo could be provided.
Sumner reached out to the Vancouver Sun and the librarian there finally found the original photo of Taylor in the newspaper’s archives.
She told Sumner that the black bar over her father’s eyes had been applied with ink but she managed to remove it and the full picture appeared.
“That was the real moment for me,” said Sumner to the Vancouver Sun.
“To see his face.”
Further news stories printed at the time of Taylor’s arrest gave Sumner more information about him and his offending.
The day of the bank robbery he had approached a teller and said was desperate.
“This is a stickup, give me amount [sic] money you got,” he demanded.
Strangely though, when the teller handed over the money Taylor pushed it away, and stated he did not want it.
It was reported that at his trial Taylor told the court he had been released from the city jail a couple of days before after being arrested for loitering.
He wanted to go back to jail so decided to rob the bank.
Sumner said: “He had been out of work for a month, he had no place to live and he had been drinking for two days in the beer hall.
“He didn’t want to hurt anyone, he just needed a place to stay.”
Sumner spent time piecing together Taylor’s life.
“He grew up in Merseyside, Liverpool, just down the road from John Lennon,” she told the newspaper.
“At 22, he went to Australia, then to New Zealand, then to Canada.
“He must have had big dreams, but he had a problem with drink, and he was down on his luck.”
After he was deported, he became estranged from his family.
He died in the UK when he was “middle aged”.
“To have a photo of him, it’s an absolute treasure,” Sumner said.
The original story published about Taylor’s bank robbery attempt:
Bank staff traps holdup suspect - January 25, 1957 (Vancouver Sun)
Employees of a downtown Vancouver bank raided Thursday formed a cordon to wall off escape for a suspected bank robber.
Employees of the main branch of the Royal Bank of Canada, 685 West Hastings, hemmed in a man who is now held by police. … The Royal Bank suspect lounged against a counter, surrounded by bank employees, until police arrived to arrest him.
Bank employees made no attempt to grab him, and he made no attempt to escape.
Seaman Stanley Thomas Taylor, 27, of no fixed address, has been charged with robbery. Taylor appeared before Magistrate Oscar Orr this morning and asked that his case proceed.
