DNA Test Helps Woman Find Family After 59-Year Search

Home DNA tests have been on the market for several years now and their increasing popularity has sparked family discoveries around the world.

One family recently credited a DNA test from the family tree site MyHeritage for their upcoming reunion.

Suzy Fraser, 64, of Australia, discovered that she was adopted when she was just 5 years old.

Suzy told Newsweek: "You'd always be told you were special, but my parents wanted a boy, so when they adopted me it wasn't that crash hot. They got their son five years later, but I always had that urge to find my family. I used to dream that one day I'd find—I knew—I just felt I had siblings overseas. I knew that I was conceived in the U.K."

It wasn't until 1991 when adoption laws changed that Suzy was able to secure all of the information she needed to track down her birth mother. While the state didn't allow her to contact her birth mother, Suzy was determined.

"Telling me no is not a very good thing," she said, laughing. "Because it makes me all the more determined. So I just went and knocked on the door."

She ensured that she got her birth mother alone in the yard and approached he. "I asked her name and then I rubbed her arm and said, 'I don't mean you any harm but I have to tell you I'm your daughter,'" Suzy said.

"She started crying. I started crying."

When her birth mother invited her inside to talk, Suzy had one burning question: Who was her father?

"That was the only day she ever uttered Raymond Bond," Suzy said. "She would never talk about him after that. She wouldn't tell me."

But armed with the name of her father, Suzy was inspired to keep searching for family.

Her husband Tim told Newsweek: "I'd done a lot of work with MyHeritage and my family tree. My tree went back a long way but Suzy's only had a couple of branches."

"It was a no-brainer," Suzy said. "Tim said the only way we're going to get any further is to buy you a kit."

So they purchased a DNA kit and Suzy sent off her details, later discovering a distant cousin named Colin, who lived in Gibraltar. Through MyHeritage.com, they established contact and, after some time, figured out the family tree.

Working together with Colin, Suzy discovered that she had four half-siblings in the U.K. But sadly, her father had already passed away and likely knew nothing of her existence.

"[Colin] was mesmerized at the start because he had a picture of me saying I'm Suzy, but he found a picture on Facebook and it was our other sister, Susan, and we are dead ringers for one another. We could pretty much pass for twins," Suzy said.

When the siblings in the U.K. learned they had another sister, they were shocked. But jaws dropped when they saw her face and learned her name because thirty years earlier they had lost another sister named Suzy who looked just like her.

Susan died of asthma, which shocked Suzy even further as she revealed that she is a severe asthma sufferer.

"I was reluctant to phone," Suzy's half-sister Eileen Bond told Newsweek. "I thought it could've been a scam or anything. I did email because I do get intrigued. And then Suzy came back with—I think you're my sister, I think your dad is my dad."

After the bombshell, Eileen phoned her sister Sharon Day to tell her the news. "Things went quiet for a little while we didn't know what to expect," Tim said. "Then we got an email saying Eileen had spoken to Sharon and everyone was fine. We've got another sister? Wow."

"It was a shock," Sharon told Newsweek. "But for some reason, I just knew it was true. Especially when I saw the photographs of both the Suzys—you just know that it is true. It's unbelievable really."

While the journey to find each other started more than two years ago, COVID-19 restrictions mean that the siblings have not yet met in real life, but they have spoken almost every day.

The family will meet for the first time in just a few days and spend nine days in Thailand.

"I'm not at all nervous," Suzy said. "Are you girls nervous?"

"No not at all," said the sisters, "Just excited."

Thrilled to be meeting soon, the family wanted to encourage others to search for family members.

"I've just got to say. To anybody out there. Don't give up," Tim said.

"Keep searching," Suzy added.