Finding long lost relatives

I started my genealogy hobby about 2 yrs ago. I was filling in ancestry charts and posting them all on ancestry.com. I was so deep into it that I started searching brothers, sisters, etc of all the family members that I knew about. I got to my great great grandmother Rachel Reed. I was researching her siblings. I got to her brother Henry Bell Reed and starting working down from there. Lo and behold several generations down the line there was a death notice for someone that had passed away in Fresno, CA (where I live). I couldn't imagine why they would have come out here also. So I looked in the Fresno phone book and here was one of the names I had just entered into my tree. The last name was Lingenfelter. Well my two sisters had a good friend in high school named Denise Lingenfelter. I had to call the number in the phone book. It was the widow of the Mr. Lingenfelter I was looking for, that answered the phone. They indeed were Denise's parents! So my sisters and I, and Denise are all 4th cousins from the same Reed family in Kansas/Iowa. I went on to contact the sister of the deceased Mr. Lingenfelter and she had all kinds of information for us! She had the date of death and cemetary location for my great, great, great grandfather, Thomas Jefferson Reed. This is something that had eluded us for so long. My cousin has been studying these people for decades and did not have that info. Needless to say, this was the most exciting thing that I have found to date. My father and his 3rd cousin (Mr. Lingenfelter) literally lived within a couple of blocks from each other for who knows how long. Now they are both deceased and will never know this! Anyway, I'm glad to have uncovered this little bit of history!