I just wrapped up the most delightful case of my life.
A 62-year-old female contacted me in January 2022 and asked me to identify her biological parents. She came to me with her original birth name, to include the maiden name of her birth mother. She also had a fairly detailed social history for both birth parents.
This woman quickly became my client. She is well-versed, accomplished, and has lived a most interesting life. She told me about living in a family who she didn’t at all physically resemble. Although she felt silly to admit it, one of her biggest desires was to find someone she looks like because she’s never had that. I didn’t think that was silly at all.
The search became a months-long process. Lots of pauses, some intentional, others simply necessary.
I identified my client’s birth mother first. Unfortunately, her birth mother passed away at the young age of 38, the same year I was born. But I found a maternal half brother, uncle, and 1st cousin, among many other family members.
Then I identified her birth father, an 84-year-old man, still living today, as well as another paternal half brother who has lived his entire life as an only child!
I wrote letters to all involved and mailed them out. I waited alongside my client with a small taste of her own hope and nervousness. She and I talked and waited and waited some more.
Then the break came. My client’s maternal half brother and paternal half brother reached out to her on the very same day! Her birth father soon followed.
I knew my work was done, but I soon received my own phone call from my client’s 84-year-old birth father. He wanted to personally thank me for connecting him to his long lost biological daughter whom he had been searching a lifetime for.
This birth father proceeded to tell me his life story, that he and my client’s birth mother were high school sweethearts. That when they discovered she was pregnant, they ran away together to elope. That her father found them, made empty promises, and then hid his daughter away. He told me of the years he searched for her and for the daughter he never met.
He himself, as a young African American male in the 1950s and 1960s, was tossed to and fro as he tried to make his way in life. He was a track star and as sharp as a tack, especially in mathematics. He finagled his way into a college scholarship, only to receive his draft notice in the mail. He moved from north to the south where he spoke of racism and uncertainty. He jumped out of helicopters in the war and learned to ride a motorcycle (by driving all the way across town in first gear) to be like his father. He was even a private investigator himself, for a time, escorting nurses to and fro back when that was a necessary service.
We laughed and laughed and found an unlikely kinship in one another as he sucked me into his life story and all the life he’s lived. One adventure after another. He ended our conversation with, “I’ve spent my whole life seeking adventure and adrenaline, but nothing I’ve experienced compares to the rush I felt when I learned my daughter had found me.”
Why do I love my job? This is why.