Adopted Girl Finds 'Strong DNA Match' on Ancestry.com, Leads Her to Dad She Never Knew
Genealogy websites have made a big splash in the news recently what with several arrests made in murder cases investigators once thought had gone cold a long time ago. It turns out that having large, searchable databases of genetic information can really help with catching criminals.
But you know what else those ancestry sites have helped with? Reuniting long lost families — and even discovering blood relatives people didn’t know existed.
Forty-one-year-old Sarah Demars had always known she was adopted, but she had never known either of her biological parents. A test on MyHeritage, though, connected her with 61-year-old Arland Metzger, a Spring, Texas, resident and military veteran who’d lived a wild youth.
The two took to each immediately, meeting June 15 on Megyn Kelly TODAY. “She called me Arland, and I said, ‘Honey, do me a favor, just call me dad,’” Metzger said.
Michael Scherer, an Illinois adoptee who know lives in New Jersey, had a similar experience. When he wanted to learn more about his origins, his adoptive parents “helped me, and we tried to go back to the adoption agency,” he told KRGV.
“The adoption agency was closed down. The hospital where I was born was also shut down.”
Using Ancestry.com, he was able to locate his father and siblings. Scherer’s dad didn’t even know he existed, because Scherer’s mother had told him that their baby died during childbirth.
Meanwhile, 19-year-old Laura Barnes of Lake Charles, Louisiana, was at college and living about two miles from her biological father — and neither of them had any idea. Though Barnes had known her biological mother, she didn’t have any idea about the identity of her dad.
An Ancestry.com test had tagged one John Bennett as a “very strong match,” and Barnes penned a tentative email too him, asking if he’d like to meet. His response came within a few hours of her hitting send: “WOW. Give me a minute. I had no idea.”
Bennett had been in a relationship during the late 90s, a relationship that had produced Barnes. Yet after it ended, he had no idea that he’d fathered a daughter.
“I felt apologetic because I hadn’t participated in her life,” he explained to The Tuscaloose News. “I didn’t know she was alive, but I felt guilty for not participating.
“I felt like I owed her adoptive parents an explanation and almost an apology because they had raised a child that was mine, but I had no knowledge of it.” The pair seem to be making up for lost time, though.
Bennett has welcomed Barnes into his life with open arms, as have his wife and two sons. Barnes is also thrilled to have found a place in the family.
“There’s a book on how to get through a break-up and a book on how to get through a divorce, but there’s not a book on how to meet your dad,” she said. “It’s gone so well, when it could have gone so many other different ways.”
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