Turns Out Someone Actually Reads Those Things

In the end, it turns out that all the research in the world can't take the place of pure dumb luck. In the end, what eventually enabled me to find my birth family was a fluke, a joke, a serendipitous chain of events that yielded me results I might have otherwise never reached.

In the end, it didn't matter how I found them but that I did find them, those mysterious shadow people, those biological parents, MY birth parents.

After I received the updated information from Catholic Charities, I decided time was running out and searching on my own seemed to be yielding nothing. Eric and I discussed hiring a private investigator, an option that had been dismissed on many prevous occasions as foolish, given that they would have access to no information other than what I could provide them or had access to on my own already. I was desperate and frustrated and willing to try things that seemed to have only a very small statistical likelihood of success.

Early in August of 2007, I happened upon the Albany Times Union newspaper online while doing research at work. I remembered that my mother had mentioned that she was sure that the case worker had told her that my birth family was from the Capital region. Blinking on the side of the page was a rectangular banner ad that invited me to run a classified ad, 10 days for $30.

Insane, my brain screamed, even as I typed out some quick text focused on the one identifying piece of information I had: a Cuban golf pro had been in the area in late 60s, early 70s. Maybe it would ring a bell with someone. It was $30, a small price to pay to cross "classified ad" off my list of options left to try. I was careful not to mention adoption, simply phrasing the ad as a "missing person" inquiry.

Who reads these things anyway? If you aren't looking for a car or an apartment, don't you just throw the classifieds away? That presumes that you even read the newspaper in print form anymore, for God's sakes. I called Eric at work and laughingly told him I was running an ad and not to worry--it was inexpensive, I didn't expect anything to come of it, and it just helped me to continue casting my wide net.

The ad (shown above) first ran on Thursday, August 9, 2007. Above it was positioned an plea to help someone find their birth mother and below it was a solicitation for tutors. I looked at it online, showed the other folks in my office and we all had a good laugh. Crazy Lisa, they said affectionately, there's no telling what kind of things you'll do!

Friday, August 10, the ad ran again. At 11AM, I was in a research grant meeting with my laptop. Imagine my surprise when up popped my message alert with the subject line "Golf Pro?"

Hastily, I opened the email which was simple and to the point: " I saw your ad in the Times Union. Is it XXXXX XXXXXXX you are looking for?" Time stood still, I'm fairly certain that my heart skipped several beats and the room suddenly got very quiet as my coworkers looked at me.

There, in my inbox, was an ACTUAL NAME, the first real name I'd ever encountered in my search.

The meeting stopped as one co-worker started googling for information on the man referenced in the email, while I sent back a pleasant, remarkably calm (now that I look back at it) email to the woman who had sent the email which read "Dear XXXX, Thank you for your response. I'm looking for relatives fitting the description in my ad; are you a friend or family member of Mr. XXXXXXX? Do you happen to know how I could contact him?" She immediately replied that it was her husband who remembered the name and they didn't actually know the man in question.

Meanwhile, in a five minute span, we had located the gentleman online, had two addresses and phone numbers, and had Google satellite maps of his houses. The oddest thing is that the two addresses were in Red Hook and Staatsburg, NY, both within 10 minutes of my undergraduate institution, Bard College. Five minutes after that, we had secured his current address and had a working phone number.

I was speechless.

In all of the years that I had looked for my birth parents, I had only briefly considered what I would do if I ever was fortunate enough to actually find them. I knew that first contact should not be made by phone, that it was HUGE and required a letter that was well-designed, unintimidating, friendly and open. If this wasn't the right man, it was highly likely that he would be a valuable contact as there are very few Latino golf professionals & it seemed a fair bet that they might have come into contact with each other.

I would spend the weekend crafting a letter that I thought would convey my story in a way that would reveal enough details so as to be identifying if you were familiar with it, but that would still leave questions to be answered so that I could be certain this was the right man. Monday would come and I would Fedex the letter with photographs so that I could obsessively track the arrival of the letter at the man's house. He would receive it and call me. A whole new chapter in my life would begin.

All this because of a remarkable chain of events: I ran an ad in a newspaper I've never read. A woman old enough to remember the time frame mentioned in the ad actually read. The same woman decided to read the funny little ad to her husband. The husband remembered a name, the name of a man he had never met but heard about through golf circles. They felt compelled enough to contact me. I later learned that they are both in their late 60s but yet they felt intereste enough in my story to contact me BY EMAIL. The name was of a man who is still alive and well and trackable on the internet. The man lives 15 minutes from where I lived for four years.

Never underestimate the power of fateful coincidence.