The Courage to Search

When someone finally reaches out and makes the search commitment, I understand that it is a decision not lightly taken.

It takes a lot of courage to really bite the bullet. We see a lot of people on lists who are lurking trying to get up that courage. In looking, you are really exposing yourself to that fear of rejection again. Is the hope of discovering the truth of your birth family worth the risk? People who have even found things that they do not like, being born in jail, parents deceased, drug use, etc., say that knowing is better than not knowing. That there is a certain peace and completeness to their life having found out.

Of course, we have lots of good reunions as well.

I search even though I am not one of the adoption triad, because I feel that this country treats adoptees unfairly. I do not think that anyone should be discriminated against by the government; adoptees and also birth parents definitely are. I have truly enjoyed doing my family genealogy. It is important for me to know where I came from. Adoptees do not have that option. I sometimes give adoptees the start of a family tree once I resolve the identity problem.

Having medical information is becoming more and more important.

But what actually spurs me the most is that nobody should have these things withheld from them.

So for those of you lurkers, dive in. It is YOUR information, you deserve to have what everyone else has in the way of access and rights.

I wish there was no need for adoption, but as long as there is, I hope to get many more calls that say “for the first time I saw someone who looks like me”.

This was written and posted on nwsar@yahoogroups.com. This is a list dedicated to helping people in the Pacific Northwest and California who are looking to reunite with birth family members.

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Another Reunion Search Story

It has been a while since I posted. This is an older case, but still one of my favorite. I thought I had found her mother and then waited 3 hours to hear from her. I picked up the phone to hear - "I just got off a 3 hour phone call with my mother!" Here is Polly Jones' story in her own words.

I have always known I was adopted.  My name is Polly Jones and I am 56. I was born October 10, 1954 in San Francisco.  After many years of waffling, trying to decide, do I look or don't I for my birth Mother.  I was adopted when I was only a few weeks old through The Children's Home Society and raised by the best parents and a loving sister who is 8 years older.  But as I got older, I got curious.  As an adult, I had decided to search and got some information from the Children's home.  My family name was Sirak and all were healthy.  My birth mother was 26 when I was born.  I also tried a search company Omnitrace who also gave me some information, I was born Suzanne Maire Ryles.  They had told me there were many daughters in the family and all close in age so they did not know which one gave birth to me.  These bits of information were very exciting to know. 

Then one day in August 2008, I was looking for a Yahoo Group and my search brought the list up alphabetically and the 1st one was Adoption Search Angels.... that had to be a sign...I searched the site and found that people wrote the information about themselves or a person they were searching for and one of the Angels took that information and really dug deep into their resources and found answers from the entries I was reading.   I took the chance.  I put in everything I had gathered and pushed the 'enter' button,,, and waited... It was not more than an hour and I had my angel, Diane Harman-Hoog.... I was ecstatic that my story was actually going to be researched. 

We communicated daily about information she had found, people I needed to call to find the right Sirak family.  She gave me so many leads to call to try to find family dynamics that could fit my situation.  I was no nervous making those calls.  All the people I called were very helpful and curious about what I was doing... all wished me good luck and gave me information on their Sirak family,,,that was my part of the search.  Added into my Angel mix was Diane's friend, Marilie Auger who did a lot of the history of the family, newspaper articles, obituaries and marriages in the Sirak family. 

Then that fateful day, after 2 weeks of emails and phone calls, I got multiple emails and calls from Diane and I knew something had been discovered. .  She was pretty sure she had found the right Sirak family and my mother's name is JoAnne. She is the oldest of 5 children, 1 younger sister 4 brothers. She gave me phone number to call in Florida  Now I had jumping beans inside.  What if I found her?  What would her reaction be?  Growing up, I always had one statement that I wanted to tell my birth mother.  "I was raised by a great family. This is what I always wanted you to know."   As I got older, I wanted her to know I have 2 daughters and a granddaughter. 

I called the number with shaking hands and it rang and rang and I got a generic answering machine.  This was not something you leaving and a message.  I called over 2 days and got the same machine.  I asked Diane what should I do.  She said to call her brother.  OMG!!  So I called James Sirak,  he answered.  I could barely speak. 

"I said my name is Polly Jones and I was working on a genealogy search for a client and I was looking for the Sirak family that has 2 daughters and 5 son's.  (we found out another brother had been born after I was)  Is this your family dynamics?"  "Yes it is." James replied.  "I am looking for the oldest sister and if I could have her name?"  James said "No, but if you give me your information, I will have her call you."  So I gave him my information and told him Thank You very much and wondered,,, will she call?  That was the longest 3 minutes of my life.  My phone rang and it was her.  She said "As soon as Jimmy told me there was a call from from San Francisco, she knew it was me." I gave her my original message after all these years and 3 hours later we were still talking...  I found out where my green eyes came from, her.  She and her husband, who had passed 4 years before, had 5 children, 3 daughters and 2 sons.  Their middle daughter has my same birth date, 4 years later.  All her girls were 2 years apart including me.  Now I as the oldest of 6... How cool!!!   All of her children have children so my gut feeling that I had siblings was true.  We said "I Love You" so many times during that 1st 3 hour conversation.  She emailed me her picture and I did the same.  Oh how we looked alike... Finally I have a family I resemble, and also for my girls.   We found out so much about each other.  She lives in Tennessee,  but she was in Florida when she got pregnant and came to San Francisco to stay with an Aunt and Uncle.  After I was born, she stayed in San Francisco, got a job and met her husband, who was from Salinas.  After they were married on October 29th, 1955, their 1st daughter Jenny, was also born in San Francisco.  October 29th is also the same date my adopted parents were wed in 1944.  After the earthquake in 1957, there left San Francisco.  JoAnn asked me how I got the name Polly from Suzanne?  My parents had changed it to Polly Ann.  Like me, we have thought about each other every day,, wondering.  Now that was all over.

Within the next month, JoAnne had told her children, about me.  They were shocked that she could keep the secret for 55 years.  Jenny told her "Where is she?  Let's go meet her"  So last September,  JoAnne and Jenny came to San Francisco for our reunion.  The first meeting at the airport, was indescribable.  We couldn't stop hugging and smiling.  It was looking at myself!  We are so much alike, same temperament, same sence of humor, same eyes.  It as spending time with my best friend.  We spent hour talking and trying to catch up on everything we had not said on the phone and almost daily emails.  Jenny arrived a couple of days later and it started over again.  We look so much alike, there was no doubt we were sisters.  

We spent time in the city, finding the apartment the 3 of them had lived in, the church where JoAnne and Richard had been married in, just reliving where they worked and walked as they got to know each other.  Pictures galore.  We had a story to tell and we did just that.  To the  people on the Cable Car, waitresses, busboys,  not every one, but a few chosen ones who were all so happy for us.  I remember a young busboy at a restaurant in Tiburon, we talked to, it brought tears to his eyes.  He had never hard anything like our story.  We were so touched by his emotion. 

We 3 all text, and email and keep up with all of the going's on... I plan to go to Tennessee this year to meet the rest of the family.  Jenny travels a lot in her profession, so I am planning a trip to Colorado where she is currently working in February or March. 

During one of our conversations while we were walking around, Mom was talking about telling her kids about me and Jenny said something about Mom spilling the beans.  I asked if I was the beans, Yes,,that was me.  So she gave me the nickname, of course, Beans.  I love it... 

Suzanne Marie Ryles, aka Polly Jones

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One Child's Solution to the Family Tree Project Problem

Marianne recently completed her search after many years. She had to get the assistance of the state as an emergency medical search. From information provided by the intermediary the birth family was able to contact her. She has 7 siblings on her mother's side alone! They have even met in person and Marianne is receiving some answers about her medical and family history.
When I started working with her on her search over a year ago, I told her I would do some genealogy searching for her when we found her family. I was able to fulfill that promise and just sent her 15 generations of her family history. This is her reply:

"WOW!  THANK YOU so much!   From a twig to a TREE!   When I was a little girl in 4th grade I got my first F.  "ROOTS" was in full bloom on national television, and everyone wanted to suddenly find theirs!  Our teacher assigned us to research and write out our family tree, and do some sort of art project to go with it. 

Well I went home and told my adoptive parents about this assignment, and they happily shared information about their family.  They took out the family photo's and showed me their grandparents, aunts, uncles great aunts etc...It was all very interesting and fulfilling-for them.  I meanwhile, felt more and more alien with each generation they discussed. 

All of a sudden at the age of 10, I felt more alone then ever. 

I put together a very nice report,(in my opinion). I took a small fallen branch with still smaller branches, and made photo ornaments to hang on each branch, with my mother and fathers pictures at the top.  I turned this in with a written report, citing when and where people were born,etc.   The teacher had us all read our reports out loud.  When it came to my turn she told me that mine was incomplete.  She would let me do mine the next day when I had finished it.  She wanted me to put MY info on my tree. 

Well at this point, call it rebellion-call it feeling very strange trying to be someone you truly were not, call it whatever you will, as I STILL don't know what to call it- I had no place of birth, my birth certificate was blank on identifying information.  I was always introduced by my parents as their adopted daughter,  When I would ask about my ethnic origins my  (a)parents would tell me, that I was something -ish, they didnt remember.  This made me feel like anything that mattered to me or my identity was insignificant in comparison to my adoptive identity.  (Yes- i was 10 and yes- I had these feelings)

 I was really 'feeling adopted' with this "ROOTS" assignment.  Okay Teacher-you want MY family tree, your gonna get it!   I turned in my family tree, as I saw it.  I took a coffee can, painted it pink, filled it with sand and stuck a single twig in it, with my picture atop. My report read something like, My name is Marianne Biondo.  I don't know what name I was born with.  I dont know where I was born, and I think my birthday is right, but I'm not sure.  I don't know where my roots lie.  I am a something-ish.  This is all I know about my roots.

 I got an F.  But even today I am proud of that F, because that was all I truly knew about my "roots".  That F was honest with no bells or whistles."

I thought many of you adoptees would identify, but Marianne had the courage at 10 to speak out. It is incredible even today how insensitive teachers can be on that issue. My grandchildren still get assigned that project and I always wonder if the teachers have any idea how much they hurt the adopted ones.

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From A Birth Parent - Why Your Parent Has Not Searched for You

The following is submitted by Pris Sharp. Pris is a mother of loss as well as mother of an adoptee. She is a highly respected Search Angel and is associate with the yahoo groups "theregistry" and "nyadoptees" who can assist you in your search. Pris actually wrote this article last year and I have been sending it t people who asked me this question.


 Here come the Holidays again.  I know many of you become depressed that your birth family is apparently not looking for you.  But, there are so many reasons why and not one of them means your mother doesn't love you or yearn for you.  Most likely your mother married and/or moved away and does not know about the state and on-line registries.  Perhaps she never told anyone, as we were counseled to do, and does not want to risk exposure.  More than 90% of the mothers we find do not search or register anywhere; those who say they wanted to had no idea how to go about it, where to start.  Many of them are afraid because we were told that once we had relinquished our babies we had no more rights ever, for eternity; some of us were even threatened with criminal prosecution if we ever tried to find our children or interfere with their new lives.  We were constantly reminded of what terrible, immoral women we were, that we would be shunned and shamed if people knew, even our own children.  I was told, "Don't ever tell anyone what you've done, especially not a prospective husband, because no decent man will want to have anything to do with you!"
  These were all means adoption agencies and adoptive families used to pry our babies away from us and keep us away from you.  It was a cruel, vicious business that has and will impact everyone for many years -- mothers and children especially.  I don't know of one mother who came away emotionally unscarred.  It lasts a lifetime; there is no relief -- not even having more children repairs the hole our baby lost to adoption leaves.
  Most of us slunk back home in shame and fear and tried to heal and gradually got on with our lives.  I moved 3,000 miles away because everywhere I went, whenever I would see a baby about my daughter's age, I would begin crying.  Some of us went on to prove the old adage, "The best revenge is a good life."  We became successful businesswomen, super-achievers, as if to say, subconsciously, "I am *not* a bad person and I will not accept your blame!"  Others could not recover from the trauma and sunk into depression, alcoholism, drugs.  A very few became what I call "serial birthmothers" -- getting involved in more inappropriate, doomed relationships , having one or more babies and giving them up to adoption.  These women tend to be scarred with a lot of guilt and definitely will not search. 
  So many mothers, when they are found, say, "I thought you would be mad at me.  I didn't think you would want to have anything to do with me."
  This is what we have to keep reminding the NY and other state legislatures when they claim original birth certificates (OBCs) of adoptees are sealed "to protect the privacy of the mother."  It's a privacy cruelly *enforced* on us, never asked for, never wanted. 
  The best thing you can do when your search seems to be stalled is get involved in the efforts to restore OBCs to adoptees and tell them when they try to tell you "Your birthmother wants privacy" that you want to hear it from her own mouth and don't need anyone presuming to speak for her, thank you very much!

For more information on adoption and how mothers were treated in the “Baby Scoop Era” (end of World War II to 1972), go to www.babyscoopera.com

For information on how to get involved in legislative efforts to unseal OBCs, go to:

In NY State:  www.unsealedinitiative.org
In PA: Pennsylvania Adoptee's Rights www.adopteerightspa.org or on Facebook or http://groups.google.com/group/AdopteeRightsPA
In NJ:  NJCare on Facebook or http://nj-care.org/


Search on Yahoo Groups for other geographically specific groups Theregistry will help anywhere.

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The Search is Over - Greg's Story

The success of Greg's search was greatly due to his perseverance to get the truth. Greg is his birth name. It took many pieces to get Greg's answers and help from all over the United States. Greg asked if he could tell his story in his own words as he wants to share how he feels about having been an adopted child with no answers. So here it is:


The search began twelve years ago, was revisited six years ago, and concluded this month. The big question that needs to be answered, " Why search at all?" Pragmatically thinking in my case I was chosen by people who wanted me. They were able to want me because the state had me, and the state had me because the people that conceived me didn't want me.

Where did the search start? Six months ago with the registry of New York, a Yahoo group. Six years ago with the Alma society. Twelve years ago with the Hugs organization. But the search really started in a doctors office in Oakland where I was being tested for allergies. I was 5 and kinda hanging out in the kids toy area of the lobby. 40 years ago a popular toy was the wood bench that you would fit different shaped articles in and then bop it with a hammer to get them through the opening. As I was looking trying to get a full set (communal toys are often incomplete, remember that phrase) There were about 3 different "sets" but none were complete, so I decided to make a set, and was able to save one piece. There was a circle shape in the 'bench' but no dowel, there was however a star shaped dowel that would fit within the confines of the shape. It worked, the other kid in the area said, "You fixed it! Can I play with it?" I handed it over, went and sat down, and waited for my turn in the doctors office. To the kid it worked, to me it did also, just not correctly.

Was I looking for a correct fit? No, I know the sacrifices and the love of my family that raised me. I also knew the shortsightedness and quick fix mentality of the family that abandoned me. Please do not be offended, the truth is the truth, and no amount of political correctness will reveal more truth than the blunt honest truth. Just like communal toys, this communal child was incomplete. I do not know why, but I knew the difference between a volunteer (the family that raised me) and an obligation (the family that abandoned me) I knew and saw through my friends and family that there was something a little more that there was blood in the game, And whether real or imagined I thought that the bloodline made a difference.

The first and second searches were wrong time, wrong place types of deals, I was often hooked up with "free or low cost persons" who guaranteed contact, but ignored the basic non-identifying information, often telling me "your mother's name was princess snowflake, and your father was Shaka Zulu" or something that ridiculous. It was an ever frustrating experience, and although I do not fault people for making a living, I didn't think that someone should charge an illegitimate child to find out who his parents were. Really, hasn't the child been through enough? One of the pieces of information mentioned the birthmother had moved to New York. So 6 months ago, I joined the NY group. I was helped by several people most notably and most helpful Diane Harman-Hoog.

The secret to the search is fresh eyes and pointed questions. If you paint a government worker into a corner with information about your search, they will often reveal more than just the simple information that you requested. One of those things was a psychological profile done 9 months after my birth. The psychiatrist listed my first and middle name on the evaluation, and mothers maiden name. This was huge information, because in prior searches the birth mother and birthfathers last names were transposed. The middle name was also key, because it was the same as the birthfather's middle name. Through the process of elimination, we were able to crosscheck hundreds of bits of information and narrow it down to 12 names on the birthmothers side, and 4 on the birthfathers side. Then 2 months passed with nothing. Two months compared to 43 years seems like not a lot of time, and it wasn't but it felt like an eternity. We had a stalemate, then a searcher who seemingly was throwing spaghetti off the wall e-mailed me the name of my birthfather, I looked at my notes, and the state of birth, the date of birth, the age of his father and time of death all were wrong, But the middle name was right. So I called for a week, he finally answered, I believed that he knew who I was, and when he answered he confirmed it. From him we got the first name of the birthmother and were able to close the search in about 12 hours time.

What did I hope to get out of this? I'd be lying if I didn't tell you that I wanted to be wanted by the ones who were supposed to have wanted me. So that would be a fairy tale ending. We live in the real world sometimes its great, sometimes its less than that. For now I'll have to be content with the star shaped dowel through the circle. I know plenty of people got their noses out of joint when Rules of Engagement made a comment about "used babies" I didn't. That statement didn't offend me, in fact it kinda described how I felt. Thank you for your time, and good luck.

Greg found his birth father with one adopted son and a daughter in Utah. Greg particularly feels pain that his father rejected him but yet went on to adopt another son. From my point of view, perhaps it was an attempt to make amends in some sort of way.

His mother was a nurse and was tracked down through rather sketchy information on his non-ID as well as through a news article about her getting her nurses cap at a ceremony. He also has two male siblings from her. She died in 1990. Greg was able to get a picture of her by asking the nursing school if they had one and they were kind enough to send it. She was a beautiful woman.

The most recent development was that Greg was able to find her nursing school roommate and learn a little more about his mother. She was also found through a news article.

Please note that Greg kept up the search despite the fact that his parents had two of the most common last names which slowed us down for quite a while. He will always grieve for the mother he never knew and for what might have been.

As a curious last note, Greg lives quite near me, far from where he was born in California. I used to live even closer to him when he was a young boy and his soccer team played my son's soccer teams. I hope to actually meet him one day.

Greg was willing to come out and tell us just how he felt and feels in the hope that other adoptees will identify with his feelings and also know that many searches are solved.. I would like a birth parent to share their feelings as well in a future blog.

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Help Emergency Locators Find Matches for Medical Emergencies

EMLA is a volunteer organization that specializes in helping find family members when a medical emergency is at hand. Some examples are when a donor is needed or when an adoptee has a medical condition and the physicians need family medical information.
Thanks to short sighted legislation that seals adoption records from even adult adoptees, 5 million or more Americans do not have a family medical history available.
One of our own Search Angels has just found her birth sister and has learned that her birth brother died from ALS (Lou Gehrig's disease). In Googling the hereditary component of the disease I found the following write up

Q. Is ALS hereditary?
A. ALS is directly hereditary in only a small percentage of families. The majority of patients with adult-onset ALS (90%) have no family history of ALS, and present as an isolated case. This is called sporadic ALS (SALS), and although there is likely a genetic predisposition involved, SALS is not directly inherited in a family. Rare exceptions are when familial ALS (FALS) is masked due to an incomplete family history, such as if the patient is adopted or the patient's parents died at a young age. The remaining 10% of persons with ALS have a close second family member with ALS, which is referred to as familial ALS (FALS).
Currently the best tool to distinguish between SALS and FALS is the family history. A neurologist or genetic counselor will ask whether anyone else has ever been diagnosed with ALS, and if anyone else in the family had progressive walking or speech problems. If so, they will likely ask additional questions to see if the health problems were related to ALS or any number of other causes. They will also inquire about the ages that family members passed away to see if any close relatives passed away at a young age, meaning that a long health history is not available. It is very common to have limited information on one's family, but most families can still be reassured since the majority of instances of ALS are not hereditary. Older relatives are often good sources of family history information, and medical records can often be obtained with the help of a hospital's medical release form.

There are many diseases where the hereditary component is much more crucial to treating or diagnosing the disease.

Adoptees should not have to die because they were adopted. Help EMLA underwrite the costs of subscription databases by buying their cookbook. If like me, you do not cook, Joan, the moderator of several reunion adoption lists, suggests that you buy it to give to your lawmakers who have refused to pass adoption record reform laws. It contains not only recipes but heartwarming reunion stories.

EMLA posts this information in their flyer;
The Angel Food Volume II, our second cookbook of favorite recipes from the
EMLA! Search Angels, associates, & friends, is the perfect gift for your
family members & friends. The Angel Food II cookbook contains over 700
delicious recipes, cooking tips, successful reunion stories & more. 100% of
proceeds from the sale of this cookbook go to funding AFS/EMLA
http://adoption- free-search. org/ so we
can continue to help adoptees and birth parents with medical issues.


The cookbook can be purchased by emailing
npeuraharju@yahoo.com
The cost of the cookbook is $10.00 plus $5.00 postage in the US.

All money goes directly towards covering the cost of databases and other computing services. Our Search Angels on many boards use these services to help you. Please help us continue to afford it. All of the search angels donate money as well as their time. Please contribute so we can provide these and more outstanding services for you

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A Thrilling Search - Patty's Search

Patty has been searching for her birth family for several years. All her life she had wondered about her birth family. She loves her adoptive family, but for an adoptee, there often seems to be the feeling of a disconnect in one’s life. Any one who does genealogy should understand this need to know, but with an adoptee it is even more urgent as an adoptee has no family medical history to report. In the area of something less tangible, unless an adoptee has children, they have never seen someone who looks like them. Remember the thrill you had when you saw a picture of Great-Aunt Sarah and realized you had her smile or the inner grimace when you had Uncle Roscoe’s ears? Those identifications are all part of the human experience that defines our existence. In addition, in most states, an adoptee has no access to an original birth certificate or to information that identifies her origins. There are a number of legal ramifications involved, but why should this significant minority of 5 – 6 million people be denied what every other citizen has?
Patty like hundreds of other people discovered Search Angels. These are people who donate many hours of their time and other resources to reuniting families separated by adoption. Patty was able to get some information on her birth mother’s name and eventually a possible birth name for her father. She contacted a few close relatives of her mother’s and was shocked to find that she was born in prison. An aunt by marriage told her that she had heard that her mother killed a man in a poker game and was sentenced to 5 years in the Kentucky Women’s Correctional Institute. It turned out that her mother had died at the age of 66 in Indiana.
Patty felt discouraged and even though she had become a leading Search Angel herself, she dropped her own search to help hundreds of other people find their birth families. At the same time, her mind kept coming back to her own search. Like many adoptees, she had fear about what she would find. She would make jokes about what she had found and used the experience to assure others tht she understood and that knowing was better than not knowing.
In the world of adoptions, there is such a thing as a non-identifying document. While the people who are entitled to them vary from state to state and the content is dependent on the state laws as well as the mood of the person who extracts the information, this is a document available to many adoptees. Patty had always advised people she worked with to order theirs, but Patty had never had the nerve to order her own. A few months ago she did just that and was shocked and disappointed that it contained far less information than she already knew. This made no sense since she was born in state custody. She shared that information with her fellow search angels and one of them decided that Patty needed some answers.
Search Angel Diane is a genealogist who came into the field of adoption reunion through trying to find a cousin’s birth child. She is passionate about the belief that adoptees are not treated as full citizens in this country. She donates time and money to rectifying this. Diane says:
I had no idea what I was getting into when I started looking for my cousin’s child. The impact of sealed records on a person’s life had never occurred to me. When I heard of people dying because they could not get their medical history, stuck in another country because the amended birth certificate given to adoptees had different information than the person’s government file, unable to participate in genealogy and to identify with the people that made up her past, I knew I had to use my computer research skills to fix what I could.
Diane had become a good on-line friend of Patty’s and when she saw the comments Patty made about her non-non-ID that she got that was basically a form letter with not much filled in, she decided that she needed to at least try to help.
She volunteered to see what she could do. She started by doing a family tree that went back many generations on Patty’s mother’s side. Her people were some of the first people to settle in Kentucky. They came from North Carolina and Virginia. Patty’s son was able to find more information about her European roots as well. After she got the mother’s side done, she made a list of possible relatives who were still alive. She also cross checked with existing family trees on ancestry.com and low and behold found a Cousin Billy also doing a genealogy on this family. They corresponded and he went to the library and sent them some news articles on the crime, on deaths in the family, a list of how all the family died who were buried in the Baker Baptist Cemetery in Crittenden County Kentucky, family pictures, marriage licenses for great grandparents, etc. Cousin Billy’s great grandfather and Patty’s great grandfather were brothers.
So the next day he went to the library, and when Patty and Diane opened up an email clipping he sent they were astounded. It was the article on Patty’s mom’s trial. She claimed that the man attacked her and that it was self defense. One of Patty’s birth brothers, Donald was a witness. She did get 2 years in prison for killing the man instead of the 5 years Patty had heard from a relative. The sweet part for Patty was that the article ended saying that the lawyers were trying to get an appeal approved so that the baby would not be born in prison. The other really, really important part is that the article gave her mother’s name as Kathleen Campbell and said that it was her third marriage. Patty had thought her father’s name was Campbell, but we had no proof. So not only was that the case, but her parents were married. The next email had an article on the death of Patty’s toddler sister a few years previously and listed the family members so we had a list of siblings. (attachments enclosed at end of article)
So here we were, her mother was not a hardened criminal, her father was a Campbell and Patty’s brother Donald was a witness and could also confirm Patty’s dad’s full name.
So we were riding high. I looked up her brother and he had died last year. He lived less than an hour from Patty. He looked like a wonderful man and his memorial site had comments from grandchildren about how they would miss him. This was an awful shock to Patty as you can imagine. She had known he had existed but had delayed contacting him. We were fortunate that his obituary listed family members. Marianne found Facebook accounts with pictures for Donald’s daughter who is the spitting image of Patty and for Patty’s birth sister, Sandra. Sandra looks more like Patty’s mother. The only person Patty had ever seen who looked like her was her granddaughter.
Patty had to wait a few days before contacting them as her emotions are fragile at the moment. However, Sandra will be able to confirm which Campbell and then she will have all of her birth family as well as genealogy. Sandra even had a picture of herself and Donald as little kids on her Facebook page.
Patty’s mother died in 1993 and we feel so sad for her. She had a hard life but I have talked to a number of family members who have said that she was a considerate person sending Christmas presents and crocheting a scarf for her sister. As the Search Angel, think Patty would have liked her. Patty is a fun loving and generous soul which I expect she got from both her birth mother and adoptive family. If Patty’s father is still alive he would be 89, so he is probably gone, but she has a large family of siblings and nieces and nephews out there to get acquainted with.
Kat liked what she saw from her point of view of growing up in a poor farmer/coalminer family of what she perceived as the good life and enjoyed drinking, partying and playing cards. She ended her life as a waitress. She had married again and we believe she may have had another son. We are checking on this now.
Patty is also dealing with the fact that there was and is mental illness, such as bi-polar disease in the family as well as the fact that for the last several generations, family members died very young. Even the ones who had left the environment seem to have been affected. As of her great-grandfather’s generation, the life span seems to be what one might expect for a family in this environment, but after that point, the age of death is low with many childhood deaths. However, now she has that information and her new found Cousin Billy has been finding death certificates so we can see the cause of death. Now her doctors can be told. Billy has our honorary Search Angel award for his willing assistance.
So the moral is don’t delay contacting people and if one approach does not work try another. I have solved several searches recently through those family trees so check them out.

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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.

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The WIlliams Sisters Believe They Have Found Sister #5

Excitement was in the air yesterday as the Williams family got ready to appear on Good Morning America to tell the viewers about finding each other and about the search for Sister #5. (See previous blog from June 18 .) At the last minute GMA canceled their appearance. Apparently they had hoped to find sister #5 and present her in the course of the show. Well, I could have told them that it was not that easy!

In the late 50s, something had happened to rip apart the family. The only son, who was 11 months old died after a 2 hour illness. It has been speculated that the mother then suffered from a mental breakdown but we will never know. All the children were born at one year intervals and in different states. They were all put for adoption in Monroe Louisiana and adopted separately. Some had received what is referred to as a non-identifying information from the state and in two cases it said that there was another sister born in 1957. That is what we thought we knew. One non-ID gave a birth date of 2/21/1957.

Needless to say the family and all their supporters were crushed when GMA canceled their appearance. It had seemed such a good way to try to reach the fifth sister. However, USA Today picked up the information that morning and had an article on them. That is where sister #5 saw it and called Sister #2 Betty Robeson.

I received a call from the stunned family right after that. I asked for more Search Angels to check this woman out. They flew to the rescue and confirmed that she was a nurse, had gone to high school where she said she did and had a sister who attended the same high school and identified her mother.

We had planned to send someone to the hospital where she worked to take her picture on their phone and send it to us, bur she beat us to it and sent one herself. This is the picture that she sent -

The top picture is sister #5 , the bottom one is sister #4, Sandra taken on a phone a the hotel yesterday evening..

Here is a quick paste up of sister #5 on top of the reunion picture from June.

She seems to check out. The family is requesting a DNA test to be sure.

As all the Williams family is, she appears to be very nice and with a good sense of humor.  They were even comparing feet on the phone last night. We had been planning and sharing on Skype when they placed a call back to Sister #5. What a privilege to be part of this event!

I am leaving it to the family to name the sister, but I am so happy for them and will be holding my breath waiting for the DNA test,

This is a wonderful example of how perseverance, planning and publicity pays off.

Congratulations to this great family. Sister #5, you are one lucky gal

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Thinking Outside the Box

Often searching requires creativity.

When searching for a person on Facebook, try searching for all the possible relatives listed on various lookup sites as well. You may find family pictures or other information that you can use. In fact, unless it is a really popular surname, try searching on just the surname and go grazing for information.

I am doing an mixed ethnicity search at the moment and the family pictures are very important as we investigate one possible person after another.

Do the same thing when getting the possible relatives on one of the many lookup sites like http://www.usa-people-search.com. Look up every possible relative. Some times you may happen on to a gem of information. Do thorough searches on everyone listed.

When searching on ancestry.com, think of all the ways you can stretch the information. If you find someone in public records, refine your search and search using just the address that person lived. You may find out who else lived there.

Sometimes you need to go up a generation and come back to the generation you are interested in. Be sure to check the obituaries that ancestry.com has on line. While you are it, use the family tree, photos and other tabs that come up with your hits. Although the family trees will not typically show living people, sometimes they indicate "Living" and then the last name of descendants.

Check Classmates and check their new yearbook section. You never know!

If you are not finding someone under a birthdate that you have, try  just the year and month.

If your search is for a woman who married, look in pipl.com also for the maiden name. Legal records and old addresses may still be accessible.

Speaking of legal records. Many of the states have online searchable court record databases. Google "search New Mexico court records" for example. In some states this includes divorces and or marriages that took place with a judge.

Much of what you are looking for is in free sources. However, there are a number of useful sites. No one can subscribe to all of them so join a group like theregistry on yahoogroups.com. There you can ask for people to look things up for you. There are many such online groups.

Here are some of the paid subscription sites I use. I am sure I will leave some off by accident. Some to these sites may also be available through your public library free if you have a library card.
Http://www.ancestry.com
http://newspaperarchive.com
http://mylife.com (if you are looking for a number of people)
http://genealogybank,com
http://www.peoplefinders.com
http://www.classmates.com

I hope this will help someone. I also want to post the names of some of the best volunteer search angels I know. These are women with high principals, networking in place and excellent skills.
Patty Drabing
Priscilla Sharp
Michelle Gross
Diana Iwanski

There are many more I will try to name some more over time.

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