My client (lets call him Ron), before he became my client, registered his DNA with 23andMe for fun. His results confused him at first, then gave him the shock of his life. He shares zero DNA with his dad. When he realized his dad is not his biological father, he began digging. His research eventually led him to the identity of his biological father, a man he never knew existed. We’ll call Ron’s birth father, David.
Ron wanted to get to know David. But he discovered he missed his chance by a couple of years. David passed away in 2017.
That’s when Ron contacted me. He wanted me to gather as much information as I could find about David. He knew the basics, but he longed for more, itching to know what kind of man his birth father was.
Turns out, Ron has a half sister. When I contacted her, she indicated she had no desire to hear what I had to say. So instead of poking around further within David’s family unit, I found a long-lost college buddy who had commented on David’s online obituary. The buddy had left his phone number and asked a family member to contact him.
So I contacted him. We’ll call him Wade.
Wade was happy to share all he could remember about David with the biological son he likely never even knew about. Wade was able to tell Ron that David was a heck of a guy, an avid outdoorsman, and never knew a stranger.
Wade was dumbfounded when I called him and told him David had unknowingly fathered Ron. Because one day prior to my call, Wade himself had enjoyed his first meal with his own biological daughter, a daughter he knew nothing about until she contacted him. She too had taken a DNA test and found Wade, her biological father.
Wade and David, college buddies, had both unknowingly fathered children back in the early 1970s.
When Wade’s biological daughter contacted him, he wasn’t even certain of the identity of her mother. That mystery was solved when Wade’s biological daughter applied for her original birth certificate and received her birth mother’s name. The birth mother was an old friend of Wade’s, a neighbor back in the 1960s. We’ll call her Susan.
Wade and his biological daughter tried to find Susan, but ran into dead ends at every turn. So Wade hired me to find her. He had her maiden name, approximate age, her brother’s name, her old address from the late 1960s, and knowledge that she had moved to Arkansas.
I sifted through historical real estate records for the old address where I found a record with Susan’s parents’ names on it. They had sold the house in 1970. I then scoured Facebook for Susan’s brother’s name, knowing her current last name would very likely not be her maiden name. I hit pay dirt when I identified a profile with Susan’s brother’s name that was linked to another profile with their mother’s name. They all live in Arkansas. I kept making family connections on Facebook until I found Susan’s profile with her current married name. The pieces all fell into place quickly as I was able to verify information and connect birth mother Susan’s identity to the identity of the Susan I identified on Facebook. I had found her.
Currently, Wade, Susan, and their biological daughter are all cautiously navigating new relationships that sparked from Ron’s search for a birth father he himself will never meet.