Sibling Reunion Story

This is a domestic adoption reunion story from Utah.

“I was at work last January and did what I often do when I have a free moment: I Googled my little brother. I’d been searching for him for more than a decade, so when I typed in “Thomas adopted November 1990, Salt Lake City,” I didn’t expect to find anything.
I hadn’t seen Thomas since he was 4 days old and I was 1 year, but I always felt he was a part of me. When she was pregnant, my mom, Bobbi Ann Campbell, arranged for an open adoption with a family who could give him more than she could-she was single, and times were really hard.  ”

“Our mother loved him so much! She saved his tiny baby booties and exchanged letters and photos with his family for the first years of his life. Everything was handled through the adoption agency, so my mom never knew the last name of the family who adopted Thomas.
Then, in 1994, when I was 5 and Thomas was 4, our mother vanished. It was two days after Christmas, and she dropped me off at a friend’s while she went to pick up her paycheck and go to the grocery store. She never came back. Police couldn’t find a trace of her. Her car was found illegally parked in a nearby neighborhood a year later. The laundry she’d done the morning she left and $10 my great-grandmother had given her were still inside.
My great-grandparents raised me in a wonderful home near Salt Lake City that was full of memories of my mom. We didn’t know what happened to her, but my brother was out there. I needed to find him.

My mom never revealed who Thomas’s dad was and the adoption agency couldn’t disclose anything about my brother, so I had very little to go on. I knew his first name, that he was born in November 1990, and I’d seen a childhood photo of him with Seattle written on the back. When I was in high school, I’d spend hours searching Facebook and adoption websites for a boy named Thomas in Seattle. As soon as I was old enough, I registered with the Utah adoption registry. Nothing.
But then that night at work, up popped an article in our local paper about a Thomas Linton who was an incredible athlete and did a lot of work for his community. It also mentioned that he hoped to find his birth mother, Bobbi, although the article spelled it Bobbie. I knew it was him! I could barely breathe-I almost blacked out. I slammed both of my hands on the desk and just started to cry. My boss came over and asked what was wrong. “I found my brother!” I cried, then ran out to call my great-grandmother and give her the news.
By the time I got back to my desk, my amazing coworkers had found a phone number for him, and without thinking, I dialed. A man I assumed was Thomas’s father answered. I blurted out that I thought I was his son’s biological sister. There was a pause. “What happened to Bobbi?” my brother’s dad, Kent Linton,  asked. ”

Read the rest at  I Found My Long-Lost Brother [Shine from Yahoo 12/28/12]

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