Search and Support Online Groups - TheRegistry - YahooGroup

There are many groups with Search Angels or other resources to help you with your search. Perhaps the best is theregistry on yahoogroups. Theregistry was started in April 1999. It is an interactive email group. People post encouraging messages, information and queries to the whole group. The messages are delivered to the subscriber's mailbox.

In addition to the message forum, the site includes folders to hold informational and reference files, albums for photos and other features. Messages, files and photos published here are only visible to the members of the group.


The Registry was started by a lady who called herself Angry Grandma. Grandma was an adoptee, and found her mother. She took care of her birthmother till she died. At that time, she turned the group over to Jan known as Grandma Jan. That was in 2006.

Jan is a first mother, and started to run the group. At which time, Joan offered to help. She gladly accepted Joan's assistance. Joan was in the background doing things for the board, and members, till Jan became ill, and wasn't able to work the group. Jan isn't able to participate and then Joan became the Head person of the group. She has three groups, one is www.nyadoptees.com  the other is Arizona Search _support at yahoo. Joan appreciates the yahoo format, for messages, and files, and links. This best helps  members with information and guidance.
Joan states that "in the meantime, our wonderful angels have been helping people find their loved ones.  < We have angels from all different states. Some run their own sites, and help those that come to our board, to get the best guidance for the states they know. Some Angels will help with all states.

We network with other groups. The top goal is to reunite people.

I hope our new presence on Facebook, will help others to get the search help they need.
We have more plans to expand so people can find us and again get the search and support help they need.
Since you are reading this, it could be helpful if you would share information about us on your Fb pages.
There are a lot of people who want to search and don't know where to begin. .You might help someone else without knowing it by sharing our group name and contact information."


In November 2006, Joan E took over as moderator of the group, she screens each person who tries to join and answers their initial questions and advises them to sign up on isrr.com and their state mutual consent registry.  There are now almost 3000 members in this group. The majority are silent lurkers, but some of the best Search Angels are associated with this group.

Joan continues to screen each message that is posted to be sure that personal information like phone numbers is not published to the list, but rather exchanged privately among members.

Group resources include files on how to proceed with searches and an explanation of the laws that pertain to reunion searches for each state.

Group members solve 4 or 5 cases per month. Each search can take from an hour to months or years. Group members take a great deal of pride in their work and keep confidential information secret. Being a Search Angel, involves emotionally moving in with the family for a while and becoming one of them and thinking like them. The Search Angels have a high standard of professionalism. There are two style of Search Angels, the loner, introspective type like I am and the more gregarious type who solve problems in groups. No matter which category the Search Angel falls into we still share information and network our resources.

Joan has just set up two Facebook accounts : Looking For and SearchAngelCentral  to help get the word out that there is help out there. Please join theregistry if you are looking for help and support.


There are also regional support groups on Yahoo groups such as nyadoptees (also moderated by Joan E) to help with those very difficult NY searches.

There is also a very active group for Pacific Northwest Searches,Their moderator writes -
In the 90s, there was an online group focused on WA searches called "Washington State Triad" mailing list. There were many in that group that helped with searches before the term 'search angel' came into being. Members of this group were activists, some were involved in getting the OBC unsealed in Oregon, then made several attempts to get laws changed in WA. This original group is also responsible for getting Spokane County to release non-id because until some group members went and had a face-to-face visit with the then County Clerk, Spokane had refused to release non-id. Now days they give some of the best info around.


In the early 2000s, that group started dying down most likely from burn out so another WA adoptee started this group in Sept of 2002. The original name of the group was 'Washington State Adoption Search' and as the name implies, the group was focused on searches in WA.


For the first couple of years, this group had pretty light activity. Then in Dec 2004, BrendaO joined the group and got the group really fired up (YEA!) because of Brenda's enthusiasm to help others with their searches. Kind of fun to go look at the group's home page and look at the "Message History" and see the spike in posts from Dec 2004 onward. : )


In 2005, we started requiring potential members to fill out a pretty long application before they could be accepted into the group. There were several reasons for this:


1. We wanted to know all the basics of someone's search so we could provide them with 'next steps.'


2. We only wanted people in the group that we could really help.


3. We only wanted legit people in the group that were connected to adoption. We wanted to prevent any scammers, paid searchers, trouble makers, etc, from joining the group. So far this has worked well and we really do have a great group of people in this group and many feel like family. : )


In Spring 2006, I was helping a long-time adoptee friend of mine with her Oregon search. I knew nothing about searching in Oregon other than adoptees can get their OBC and I was fortunate to find Donna and Connie (HOORAY!!). They joined this group so then this group was able to help with both WA and OR searches. Because there were no groups focused on helping with Idaho, Montana, Alaska, we started taking on those searches, too.


In April of 2007, we changed our name from "Washington State Adoption Search" to the current name "Northwest Adoption Search and Reunion" to better reflect all the areas we are able to help with.


For the last 3-4 yrs, we've had a lot of search angels from around the country join the group so we have experts for all over the place. Because we happen to have some of the best California searchers in the group now, we are also able to help them. So I've been thinking we might have to change the name of our group once again to something that includes 'West Coast' or who knows what!

Don't struggle blindly in the dark, get some support, some help and find friends. Most important find a Search Angel.

Good luck with your search.