(piano music)
- When my parents felt that I reached an age
that I could understand it and comprehend it,
that's when they opened up and told me everything.
You ask yourself, where did I come from?
Do you know any of my history?
Do I have brothers and sisters?
Do they wanna see me?
Those questions follow you every day
throughout your entire life until you either
give up or you do in fact meet your biological family.
(piano music)
So I contact Susie, and she immediately got back to me.
What's your Social Security number?
When were you born?
What hospital, what city?
Within a matter of hours, she had already found the family.
Through Search Squad and Susie Mathis,
I met my biological family, and the rest is history.
- My first case was 17 years ago,
and I had no clue what I was doing.
(door closing)
When I was working, especially if one came in late,
I mean, it was nothing.
I would stay up 'til two or three o'clock
all the time searching.
(beeping)
I stopped working in February,
because I have a medical illness,
and now that I go to the hospital every day,
I mean, I definitely am searching almost every morning
while I'm sitting there.
(dramatic music)
Search Squad is a closed Facebook group
dedicated to helping adoptees and birth families reunite.
(dramatic music)
We have about 100 Angels, and we have 60,000 plus members.
We all have different talents to bring to the table,
so, we do work together as a team.
Every search is different.
Some can be solved in a matter of minutes.
Some can take months, years, or maybe not at all.
It really depends on the information you have,
or the information you can obtain.
The first thing that a searcher would do
would be to join our group, Search Squad.
In order to do that, they have to answer some questions.
Are they looking, do they have a search for someone,
their relationship to that person.
Because we wanna protect people's privacy,
no sensitive information goes in the group
even though it is closed.
There's just too many people there that can see it.
(dramatic music)
So, the first thing I do is of course
look at the information they have.
Then I open birth index records,
and we use several sources for that.
VitalSearch is one that I use.
Ancestry is another one.
- We use Classmates.
We start looking for schools if we have a school,
and we will use GenealogyBank to look up obituaries,
military records, find a grave websites.
We will grab pictures of people that we think
are possibilities and they'll be side by side,
and you look at how deep their eyes are,
or their cheekbone structure, or their chin, their ears
to find any kind of information that we can.
Every child that was adopted wasn't placed in a happy,
healthy home, you know?
Maybe there was just never a close connection.
So, I think even if it's not a happy ending they know,
and it gives them closure, and that they at least
know their answer.
(dramatic music)
- This is your adoption announcement.
- That is? - Yeah.
It's the one that I, (mumbles).
- I don't know if I've ever seen this.
Did, is this something you guys sent to everyone, or?
- Yeah, to the family, and...
- That's kind of cool!
- Yeah.
- I don't think I've ever seen that.
(murmuring)
I was born August 30th, 1970 in Cincinnati, Ohio,
at Jewish Hospital.
Immediately placed into adoptive care.
September 25th of 1970 I was given
to Eileen and John Murray.
(dramatic music)
They sent me to the best schools.
They always made sure that both myself
and my sister had everything that we needed.
Even though my mom and my father did great,
there's still that one piece that's missing,
and it's, it's an eternal void.
- My most recent case, I was contacted by a sister
searching for a sister, and when Sherry gave me
the information she had an exact date of birth.
By the end of the day, we narrowed it down
to one person that matched all of the information
that she had.
I met with Paula the next day,
and it was really crazy, because she had told me
her son had just done DNA.
Before that, Sherry had done DNA years ago
trying to find her sister.
(dramatic music)
By getting Sherry's DNA and Paula's son uploaded
to a public site called GEDmatch
we were able to confirm that they were sisters.
And then at that point I put them
in contact with each other.
(dramatic music)
- It's been a long time.
Do you remember when it started?
- When I started looking for him?
- Yeah.
- Probably nine, ten, I was told,
and then I started asking questions around 13.
I just wanna see if we look alike.
I wanna see if she looks like my mom,
so I've got some of my mom out when she was young.
I had a picture made for her, of my mom,
to give to her.
And I did go get her some flowers today.
- Why'd you wanna get her flowers?
- Just to say welcome to the family.
- Did you ever have any questions around it?
- Oh, absolutely.
Why am I, why was I given up?
You know, I did have a loving family,
but it's still nice to know the why.
- I am here with Susie Mathis, the Search Angel,
and big John Murray is on his way.
- Yes, he is.
- What the Search Angels had done was brought me
into a location where they had already pre-positioned
my biological mother, Linda,
and my brother, Johnny, and Terry.
So I was so focused on this table,
I didn't even see what was going on around me.
And then I was asked, do you wanna meet them?
And I said, yeah.
They said, turn around.
(people laughing)
Oh my God!
Are you serious?
I was like, there's no question.
There is no question that these are the people
that I've been looking for, and it turns out that
they had been looking for me for the entire time, too.
For the first time in my life, I actually felt whole.
(dramatic music) Oh my God!
- Is this it?
Do you think it's okay to pull in the driveway?
- We're family. (laughing)
Sure. (laughing)
- Oh, gosh.
(door creaking)
(dramatic music)
- Paula?
- Sherry?
(laughing)
(dramatic music)
- I get to finally meet you.
- I know! (laughing)
We have to talk about it.
(laughing)
- I can't believe it.
- You do look like mom.
(laughing)
You look more like mom than I do!
- I do.
- Every search, no matter how it starts or ends,
there's intense feelings on the side of that searcher,
and that's carried over to us.
I have a passion for helping people.
I've always been a people person.
I got connected with Search Squad,
and fell in love.
It just became a passion.
- So-- - Wow!
- It's unbelievable.
- It is!
(gentle music)
- And these are for you.
- Need a hug.
- You're welcome.