In April, Jimmy Lippert Thyden of Arlington, Virginia, read a news story about a man who’d been stolen from his mother in Chile and adopted by an unsuspecting couple in the U.S. Thyden, 42, had also been born in Chile and raised by adoptive parents in Virginia, and it made him wonder if the same thing might have happened to him.
Thyden contacted the Nos Buscamos Foundation, an organization working to reunite thousands of Chilean mothers with their stolen children, and they provided him with a DNA test kit. Within weeks, he learned what he had suspected: he was stolen from his mother at birth and adopted by an American couple who had no idea. On top of this, Thyden learned that his birth mother was still alive and he has four brothers and a sister!
Last week, he traveled to Valdivia, Chile, where he finally got to meet his birth mother for the first time. "Hola, Mamá," he said as he first laid eyes on María Angélica González. After the tearful reunion, Thyden got to meet his other family. They sang “Happy Birthday” to him in Spanish and gave him 42 balloons, one for each birthday they missed together. Some of the balloons contained personal messages. One message reads, “I Love You,” another, “Welcome to our home,” and one was from his mom, which reads, “You're the most beautiful chapter of my story."