WEBVTT - We’ve Met Once Before 0:00:00.160 --> 0:00:06.680 Family Secrets is a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:06.920 --> 0:00:09.640 She doesn't belong to me, I told him, And I 0:00:09.640 --> 0:00:13.039 don't belong to her. I know that, so at s 0:00:13.080 --> 0:00:17.200 and Nogo. According to the papers, she worked at a cafe. 0:00:17.600 --> 0:00:21.800 I said, I'll fly there and then I'll. 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:23.000 See her from across the street. 0:00:24.200 --> 0:00:26.680 Many in my position hoped to learn that they had 0:00:26.720 --> 0:00:31.240 been wanted by their mothers, which I considered materially insignificant information. 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:34.239 But I wanted to know her, or at least know 0:00:34.280 --> 0:00:36.919 what it felt like to be near this woman. If 0:00:36.920 --> 0:00:39.400 it came to it, I'd settle for being near at 0:00:39.440 --> 0:00:40.000 a distance. 0:00:42.560 --> 0:00:47.199 That's Tracy O'Neill, writer, assistant professor of English at Vassar College, 0:00:47.680 --> 0:00:52.640 an author of the recent memoir Woman of Interest. Tracy's 0:00:52.720 --> 0:00:57.200 story is, in a way about storytelling itself, the narratives 0:00:57.200 --> 0:00:59.560 we supply to fill in the blanks in our lives 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:03.760 when we're missing the foundation, the bedrock of our own origins. 0:01:04.720 --> 0:01:09.160 It's also a story about determination, courage, and the intense 0:01:09.280 --> 0:01:12.920 desire to know the truth, even when that truth may 0:01:12.959 --> 0:01:30.400 be hard to hear. I'm Danny Shapiro, and this is 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:33.560 Family Secrets, the secrets that are kept from us the 0:01:33.600 --> 0:01:36.360 secrets we keep from others and the secrets we keep 0:01:36.560 --> 0:01:37.360 from ourselves. 0:01:46.440 --> 0:01:52.640 He grew up in Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Some of 0:01:52.640 --> 0:01:58.960 my earliest memories were going to my extended family's houses. 0:02:00.120 --> 0:02:06.120 I would go to my auntie's house for Thanksgiving, and 0:02:06.920 --> 0:02:11.799 her husband was Italian American, so every year she would 0:02:12.200 --> 0:02:19.800 prepare like meat balls withsania seedy sauce. Then we would 0:02:19.880 --> 0:02:22.799 have salad and rolls, and then we would have the 0:02:22.840 --> 0:02:28.200 whole Thanksgiving dinner and then later desserts. On Christmas, we 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:32.960 would go to my uncle's house and every year he 0:02:33.160 --> 0:02:36.680 would dress up like Santa Claus and come down the 0:02:36.800 --> 0:02:41.360 stairs and get up and usually end up doing things 0:02:41.440 --> 0:02:47.120 like distributing cans of like nuts or bottles of perkium 0:02:47.240 --> 0:02:51.960 to his siblings. And he was my godfather, so he 0:02:52.040 --> 0:02:55.280 would often also give me, say a barbie or. 0:02:55.240 --> 0:02:58.519 Something like that. So that was my father's side. 0:02:58.840 --> 0:03:01.800 My mother's side was a little bit rougher, So we 0:03:01.800 --> 0:03:05.320 would go there and it's like there would always be 0:03:05.440 --> 0:03:09.600 people drinking cold cups of coffee that had been out 0:03:09.600 --> 0:03:13.120 all day. It was sort of endless coffee, endless cigarettes, 0:03:13.200 --> 0:03:16.239 endless donuts from Mike's donut Shop, which is a sort 0:03:16.240 --> 0:03:21.200 of Boston institution, and it was me and my parents 0:03:21.280 --> 0:03:25.440 and then eventually my brother. Each side of my family 0:03:25.680 --> 0:03:31.040 there were many aunts, many uncles, cousins. Both my mother 0:03:31.120 --> 0:03:33.639 and my father are from families in which there were 0:03:33.680 --> 0:03:34.360 six children. 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:36.640 My father's side. 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:41.600 Was Irish American. My mother's side was a little bit 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:45.280 more mixed. I think at some point, when I was 0:03:45.360 --> 0:03:50.440 maybe in elementary school, she started learning more, but what 0:03:50.520 --> 0:03:53.120 she always said was that her family was. 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:54.160 French and Irish. 0:03:55.240 --> 0:03:59.560 My mother is somebody who always really really wanted to 0:03:59.560 --> 0:04:03.160 be a moment. She loved kids, she loved doing sort 0:04:03.160 --> 0:04:07.520 of childlike things, and you know, in large part when 0:04:07.560 --> 0:04:11.080 she was growing up, I think that she took care 0:04:11.240 --> 0:04:15.440 of the people around her a great deal, including her siblings, 0:04:15.480 --> 0:04:19.919 and that continued even into adulthood. If somebody in the 0:04:20.000 --> 0:04:22.560 family was in trouble, she was definitely going to be 0:04:22.600 --> 0:04:25.440 the person who wanted to go help out. I mean, 0:04:25.480 --> 0:04:28.200 I remember, even you know, when I was a kid, 0:04:28.680 --> 0:04:33.200 one of my aunts was often pretty broke and going 0:04:33.240 --> 0:04:38.200 through something, and we would drive down to Everett where 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.520 she lived, and my brother and I would wait in 0:04:41.520 --> 0:04:44.960 the car and they would go into the grocery store. 0:04:44.960 --> 0:04:48.720 They'd go into the market basket and then they would both. 0:04:48.480 --> 0:04:53.080 Come out, each with a full grocery car that my 0:04:53.440 --> 0:04:56.560 mother had purchased for her sister. 0:04:59.240 --> 0:05:02.200 Tracy was a opted from South Korea and was being 0:05:02.279 --> 0:05:05.960 raised as an O'Neill. When she was five, her parents 0:05:06.000 --> 0:05:10.920 adopted her brother, So their adoptions weren't exactly secrets. Their 0:05:10.920 --> 0:05:14.320 biological beginnings weren't exactly disclosed either. 0:05:17.040 --> 0:05:20.720 In terms of thinking about, you know, who's the real mother, Yeah, 0:05:20.760 --> 0:05:24.320 I think that she did genuinely feel that she was. 0:05:24.600 --> 0:05:29.239 And also I wouldn't necessarily dispute that. I do think 0:05:29.720 --> 0:05:30.400 that it. 0:05:30.680 --> 0:05:36.000 Was probably a role that she really hoped to preserve 0:05:36.400 --> 0:05:41.400 and protect, and in some part of her mind sure 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:44.039 that my mother knew that she did not give birth 0:05:44.080 --> 0:05:45.600 to me, she did not give birth to my brother, 0:05:45.680 --> 0:05:48.400 and she had not given birth period, and I think 0:05:48.400 --> 0:05:49.440 that can be really, really. 0:05:49.279 --> 0:05:51.560 Difficult for a lot of women. 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:56.760 So in some ways, I think she probably felt that 0:05:57.360 --> 0:06:02.080 she needed to really protect that as the mother, But 0:06:02.200 --> 0:06:05.440 also I think she wanted me and my brother to 0:06:05.520 --> 0:06:07.360 know that we did have real parents. 0:06:07.800 --> 0:06:09.160 I felt that. 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.800 Perhaps there was a sense of fear that my mother 0:06:13.880 --> 0:06:19.840 had about if I were to look for my biological 0:06:19.880 --> 0:06:22.919 mother or have the curiosity to or the desire to, 0:06:23.440 --> 0:06:27.400 and what that would mean about our relationship. I guess 0:06:27.560 --> 0:06:31.120 that the tension in some ways is that you want 0:06:31.120 --> 0:06:36.400 to do right by the people who you love. But 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:42.280 of course there is also in this case a real 0:06:42.440 --> 0:06:49.200 physical difference. So although I completely was on board with 0:06:49.360 --> 0:06:53.679 the sense that family is a habit that you create 0:06:54.320 --> 0:06:59.719 and it's showing up every day, I also understood that 0:06:59.800 --> 0:07:04.520 there was a difference in some capacity between my parents 0:07:04.520 --> 0:07:04.800 and I. 0:07:05.560 --> 0:07:07.960 Yeah, that's beautifully put in. Also, the idea that family 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:10.600 as a habit, I think, is such a such an 0:07:10.600 --> 0:07:13.880 important one. As you were growing up, was there a 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:16.720 longing in you or did that materialize later. 0:07:17.640 --> 0:07:21.000 I think that occasionally I had a curiosity about it, 0:07:21.520 --> 0:07:25.240 and it wasn't that I necessarily had something specific that 0:07:25.280 --> 0:07:30.720 I wanted to know, but I wanted to see, you know, 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:33.600 what this person's life was like. I wanted to know 0:07:33.640 --> 0:07:36.920 who this person was, what this person's interests were, so 0:07:36.960 --> 0:07:39.360 on and so forth. And I also think, but to 0:07:39.400 --> 0:07:43.560 some extent, it's also just about being able to conceive 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:49.240 of control in your life. So I think from a 0:07:49.440 --> 0:07:53.680 very young age I was aware of a certain randomness 0:07:53.720 --> 0:07:57.720 and arbitrary most to life, because of course I didn't 0:07:57.760 --> 0:08:00.480 know that I had been born in one place and 0:08:00.520 --> 0:08:02.160 in one family and ended up in another. 0:08:03.200 --> 0:08:06.440 What had you been told when you were a kid 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:09.960 about your birth circumstances. 0:08:10.160 --> 0:08:15.320 I had been told that my birth mother could not 0:08:15.840 --> 0:08:21.400 keep me. It wasn't specified what those reasons were, but 0:08:22.120 --> 0:08:24.440 it was positioned somewhat as. 0:08:24.840 --> 0:08:26.280 An issue of me need. 0:08:26.840 --> 0:08:30.000 I also had been told that I had been born 0:08:30.040 --> 0:08:35.440 in soul, and I was told a height, which was 0:08:35.720 --> 0:08:40.360 actually primarily because when I was a kid, I was 0:08:40.840 --> 0:08:45.680 at one point an aspirational child dancer, actress model, and 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:50.559 so the height had been dropped as a way of 0:08:50.559 --> 0:08:54.280 offering hope that I might get taller, like tall enough 0:08:54.320 --> 0:08:56.440 to be a viable model, which of course I was 0:08:56.480 --> 0:08:59.360 never going to be. When I was a kid, my 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:03.840 mother had put me into dance classes. I don't think 0:09:03.880 --> 0:09:05.840 that my mother knew exactly what she was getting into 0:09:05.840 --> 0:09:08.320 at the time, but it was a real sort of 0:09:08.360 --> 0:09:13.040 paget bar. So essentially I started taking these tap dancing lessons, 0:09:13.080 --> 0:09:15.960 and pretty soon, you know, it was being suggested that 0:09:16.000 --> 0:09:21.480 I participate in pageants. So a couple of years after that, 0:09:21.640 --> 0:09:25.480 my first job in a way was doing like commercials 0:09:25.520 --> 0:09:28.360 and catalogs modeling. You know, when I was maybe like 0:09:28.559 --> 0:09:35.080 seven six seven years old, I stopped dancing and acting. 0:09:35.360 --> 0:09:38.640 Around the time that I middle school. We moved to 0:09:38.640 --> 0:09:41.320 New Hampshire, and I got very into figure skating. For 0:09:41.360 --> 0:09:44.160 a while, I was obsessed, and then when I was 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:48.320 a teenager, I ructured a couple of vertebrae, so I stopped, 0:09:48.480 --> 0:09:50.640 and in a way, I'd never really thought that much 0:09:50.760 --> 0:09:55.080 about what it would be to go to college or 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:57.679 live in adult life. There was really only one thing 0:09:57.720 --> 0:10:00.280 that I wanted to do, and that was skate. So 0:10:00.440 --> 0:10:04.760 I sort of very quickly tried to suddenly become a student. 0:10:05.120 --> 0:10:08.319 And I really didn't start to understand what it meant 0:10:08.360 --> 0:10:12.040 to be a student until I was probably almost done 0:10:12.120 --> 0:10:16.280 with college. When I was nineteen, I really wanted to 0:10:16.360 --> 0:10:17.959 go study abroad. 0:10:18.040 --> 0:10:20.160 I wanted to go study in Italy, and. 0:10:20.679 --> 0:10:23.600 You know, I'd never been anywhere outside of the US 0:10:23.720 --> 0:10:27.680 before except for when I was born. So you know, 0:10:27.720 --> 0:10:30.520 I got home that summer and I had already gotten 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:33.360 into the program, but I needed to make money, and 0:10:33.400 --> 0:10:35.840 so I was going around trying to apply to all 0:10:35.840 --> 0:10:40.480 of these jobs, like basically any place that was within 0:10:40.960 --> 0:10:44.000 like let's say forty minutes the house that I grew 0:10:44.040 --> 0:10:45.599 up in, I would go and I would apply for 0:10:45.600 --> 0:10:48.320 a job, and I wasn't getting any traction. And so 0:10:49.000 --> 0:10:52.000 after a few weeks, the one place that I could 0:10:52.080 --> 0:10:57.000 get a job was this strip club in Billiards Hall 0:10:57.520 --> 0:11:00.800 called Mark Show Place, which was in Bedford, Newhampshire. So 0:11:01.040 --> 0:11:04.280 I went there and essentially I asked for a job, 0:11:04.400 --> 0:11:09.480 and you know, I exist and looked enough like a woman, 0:11:09.559 --> 0:11:11.520 I guess that they were willing to hire me. 0:11:12.040 --> 0:11:13.280 So I started bartending there. 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:16.800 So at some point my father asked me about my 0:11:16.920 --> 0:11:20.360 new job, and I said that I was working at 0:11:20.400 --> 0:11:24.520 a place called March Showplace. What I hadn't really anticipated 0:11:24.679 --> 0:11:26.920 was that he was going to think that it was 0:11:26.960 --> 0:11:29.880 really great that his daughter got this job and start 0:11:29.920 --> 0:11:34.119 telling people at work that his daughter got this job. Essentially, 0:11:34.480 --> 0:11:36.720 he found out for his coworkers that it was a 0:11:36.760 --> 0:11:37.440 strip club. 0:11:37.840 --> 0:11:41.640 So one night he and my mother showed up and they. 0:11:41.520 --> 0:11:46.760 Were incredibly distraught and you know, they wanted me to leave. 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:48.960 There was a pretty big scene. 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:54.640 The owners of the club called for security and in 0:11:54.720 --> 0:11:58.280 the moment the options were essentially that I could leave 0:11:58.320 --> 0:12:01.560 with them or I could stay and continue working, and 0:12:01.920 --> 0:12:06.640 I decided to stay and keep working because it was 0:12:06.960 --> 0:12:08.640 the only way that I was going to get to 0:12:09.000 --> 0:12:14.480 go study in Italy. So I graduated and I moved 0:12:14.480 --> 0:12:18.680 to New York City because my best friend, who's like 0:12:18.760 --> 0:12:22.400 my brother Ali from college, was. 0:12:22.280 --> 0:12:24.319 Moving to New York City and. 0:12:24.600 --> 0:12:29.360 He was basically right about everything and the most fun 0:12:29.440 --> 0:12:30.160 smart person. 0:12:30.920 --> 0:12:32.600 I came to the city. 0:12:32.520 --> 0:12:37.199 On the Chinatown bus, which, as I think a lot 0:12:37.240 --> 0:12:41.480 of people probably know, was apt to burst into flames 0:12:41.559 --> 0:12:43.719 on any given ride, but also cost like ten or 0:12:43.760 --> 0:12:47.920 fifteen dollars at the time, So I basically just got 0:12:47.920 --> 0:12:50.480 on the bus with my suitcase. I had like six 0:12:50.600 --> 0:12:53.360 hundred dollars in my pocket, and that was. 0:12:53.320 --> 0:13:01.120 It will be better back in a moment with more 0:13:01.160 --> 0:13:20.199 family secrets. Tracy spends her first years in the city 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:22.920 tending bar and figuring out what she wants to do 0:13:22.960 --> 0:13:26.920 with her life. She becomes serious about writing, goes to 0:13:26.960 --> 0:13:30.360 grad school, and continues to bartend as she also starts 0:13:30.360 --> 0:13:34.520 her academic career. Then the pandemic hits, which of course 0:13:34.640 --> 0:13:37.480 changed many of our lives, both in dramatic ways and 0:13:37.559 --> 0:13:41.800 as subtle ones. In Tracy's case, her curiosity about her 0:13:41.800 --> 0:13:44.720 birth mother, which has ebbed and flowed over the years, 0:13:45.160 --> 0:13:47.880 comes into focus. 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:52.400 So this was the spring of twenty twenty and I 0:13:52.520 --> 0:13:56.959 was reading the news, and I remember that this article 0:13:57.080 --> 0:14:00.560 came up. It was in the South China Morning Post, 0:14:01.480 --> 0:14:06.040 and it was about a man in South Korea, and 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:09.960 this older man had died in a locked covid ward. 0:14:10.520 --> 0:14:14.000 There were details in it like that he was only 0:14:14.080 --> 0:14:18.560 ninety pounds and that there was nobody to contact about 0:14:18.559 --> 0:14:22.680 his body when he died, And there was something about 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:30.320 the image of this rail older person alone dying that 0:14:31.640 --> 0:14:35.480 really it was too much for me to bear. So 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:39.680 at that point I felt that there was no longer 0:14:39.720 --> 0:14:42.480 an option, and I was going to need to go 0:14:42.800 --> 0:14:46.120 find the mother who gave birth to me, because she 0:14:46.320 --> 0:14:49.880 too could be like this man dying alone. 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:54.000 What's so amazing about that story is that I think 0:14:54.080 --> 0:14:57.440 so often someone embarking on a search like this is 0:14:57.440 --> 0:15:03.120 embarking for their own emotional reasons or to fulfill something 0:15:03.160 --> 0:15:06.400 for themselves, And in your case, the impetus turns that 0:15:06.520 --> 0:15:07.280 on its head a bit. 0:15:08.120 --> 0:15:11.480 Yeah, I mean, I'm sure that there were reasons in 0:15:11.520 --> 0:15:18.560 both directions. So on the one hand, there was the 0:15:18.600 --> 0:15:22.760 fear that I would never get to meet this person if, 0:15:22.800 --> 0:15:27.120 in fact they, let's say, died of COVID at that 0:15:27.160 --> 0:15:31.880 particular moment in time. So there is the question of 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:35.680 a lost opportunity for myself. But there also seemed to 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:40.480 me something very sad there, because I had sort of 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:44.400 spent a great deal of my life thinking about how 0:15:44.440 --> 0:15:47.280 this woman who gave birth to me had chosen a 0:15:47.320 --> 0:15:53.960 particular path for herself, and that path was not necessarily 0:15:54.080 --> 0:15:58.640 the path that most women followed. In some ways, I 0:15:58.680 --> 0:16:03.360 had imagined that this person had maybe you, decided against 0:16:03.440 --> 0:16:07.520 having a child and could still be somebody who had no. 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:10.160 Child, no family, no spouse. 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:15.160 And I was sort of interested in this person for 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:18.400 making that choice. But I also could see how that 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:21.800 could be a terribly sad and frightening place to be 0:16:21.960 --> 0:16:23.520 in at that moment in history. 0:16:26.880 --> 0:16:29.440 As is the case with many adoptees and other people 0:16:29.480 --> 0:16:32.640 who don't have much, if any information about their origins, 0:16:33.320 --> 0:16:37.400 Tracy constructs narratives that live alongside the narratives that are 0:16:37.400 --> 0:16:41.920 constructed for her. So in this moment, her narrative becomes 0:16:42.800 --> 0:16:47.440 perhaps this is my birth mother's story. This thought, which 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:50.680 takes root during the pandemic, also comes at a time 0:16:50.720 --> 0:16:55.040 of tremendous change in Tracy's life. She ends a long relationship, 0:16:55.520 --> 0:16:58.800 is offered a job teaching at Vassar College, and moves 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:02.520 from her beloved Brooklyn to Poughkeepsie, New York. It was 0:17:02.600 --> 0:17:05.800 in this perfect storm that she begins to actively look 0:17:05.840 --> 0:17:06.640 for her birth mother. 0:17:08.000 --> 0:17:08.760 I had sent. 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:16.399 Out some emails to various agencies that do things like 0:17:16.680 --> 0:17:21.200 try to locate the parents of adopted children. 0:17:21.440 --> 0:17:26.879 There's one agency in Korea that is specifically doing that work, 0:17:27.400 --> 0:17:31.640 but I also reached out to different groups, and then 0:17:31.680 --> 0:17:37.200 I started reaching out to private investigators. At the time, 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:44.760 because COVID was ravaging the world, many agencies were essentially 0:17:45.320 --> 0:17:49.360 not running, or even if they weren't, referring to themselves 0:17:49.400 --> 0:17:53.200 as not running. People were out of office, people were 0:17:53.280 --> 0:17:56.159 at home, so on, so forth. And it occurred to 0:17:56.200 --> 0:18:01.200 me at a certain point that perhaps the people who 0:18:01.600 --> 0:18:06.200 might still be working were private detectives. So I spoke 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.639 to several private investigators, and most of them felt that 0:18:09.680 --> 0:18:13.679 I simply didn't have enough information to run with, or 0:18:14.080 --> 0:18:17.159 they would say something along the lines of that they 0:18:17.200 --> 0:18:21.400 could do a search, but there were no guarantees or 0:18:21.600 --> 0:18:24.399 they would say if they spoke about the process that 0:18:24.440 --> 0:18:28.120 they were going to follow, I would realize that they 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:32.560 were essentially just going to do what the agencies did, 0:18:32.640 --> 0:18:36.080 which was running a few things in a database. Then, 0:18:36.160 --> 0:18:42.159 after several unsuccessful conversations with private investigators, I found a 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:48.480 guy named Joe Adams, and Joe, from what I could 0:18:48.520 --> 0:18:52.600 tell on the internet, worked in several different countries. I 0:18:52.680 --> 0:18:55.040 believed that the website that I found him on was 0:18:55.080 --> 0:18:58.280 called something like International Private Investigators dot com. 0:18:58.560 --> 0:19:00.080 And so I called. 0:19:00.280 --> 0:19:03.880 And I left him a message, and. 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:07.000 Pretty soon after that he called me back. 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:12.240 And at the time I was so dejected. Most of 0:19:12.240 --> 0:19:14.400 the world was pretty shy down at the time, and 0:19:14.600 --> 0:19:19.720 I was essentially living in pajamas and drinking coffee. 0:19:19.320 --> 0:19:21.600 And like smoking cigarettes for breakfast. 0:19:22.240 --> 0:19:26.280 But the morning that Joe called, it felt like suddenly 0:19:26.440 --> 0:19:30.439 I had life in my body again. So Joe called, 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:36.120 and unlike the previous investigators, he felt like I did 0:19:36.200 --> 0:19:39.120 have a great deal of information, or at least that's 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:43.640 what he expressed to me. And so pretty soon we 0:19:43.640 --> 0:19:48.240 were talking on the phone pretty regularly. And I'll say 0:19:48.240 --> 0:19:51.119 that Joe is also just really fun. Joe's kind of 0:19:51.119 --> 0:19:55.480 a peach. He's just fun to talk to, and he 0:19:55.600 --> 0:19:58.439 gave me a great deal of time, even though in 0:19:58.480 --> 0:20:03.520 fact no matter he had changed hands whatsoever. So he 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:07.720 said that he was going to maybe reach out to 0:20:08.119 --> 0:20:12.600 a fat lazy bomb in Tampa to get some connections 0:20:12.640 --> 0:20:14.880 to feed on the ground in Korea. 0:20:15.800 --> 0:20:17.600 The fat lazy Bomb in Tampa was his. 0:20:17.520 --> 0:20:23.160 Brother, And what I hadn't known when I first called 0:20:23.240 --> 0:20:28.280 him was that not only was Joe a private investigator, 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.679 he also had been an operator for the CIA. 0:20:32.760 --> 0:20:37.080 So his grand strategy was that we needed. 0:20:36.800 --> 0:20:43.040 To make contacts at the embassy because essentially, the spies 0:20:43.080 --> 0:20:46.760 at the embassy were going to know who could be 0:20:46.840 --> 0:20:52.840 trusted in Korea to do more investigatory work, whereas we 0:20:53.119 --> 0:20:55.879 would not know who was good there. At the time, 0:20:56.480 --> 0:20:59.240 it didn't really make sense to try to get a 0:20:59.280 --> 0:21:03.960 private investigator in Korea because private investigation itself had only 0:21:04.119 --> 0:21:11.280 just become legal, and there had been several fairly publicized 0:21:11.400 --> 0:21:17.360 cases of people who were positioning themselves as private investigators, 0:21:17.359 --> 0:21:22.320 stealing people's identity and so forth. So the notion that 0:21:22.600 --> 0:21:26.840 we should try to find somebody trustworthy there made sense 0:21:26.880 --> 0:21:27.040 to me. 0:21:27.080 --> 0:21:35.600 At the time, Joe may have a grand strategy, but 0:21:35.880 --> 0:21:38.720 not so much in the way of follow through. He 0:21:38.920 --> 0:21:43.119 just kind of vanishes. But Tracy's determined to continue the 0:21:43.160 --> 0:21:46.680 investigatory work on her own. Joe had suggested that she 0:21:46.800 --> 0:21:49.080 try to locate people who had worked at the agency 0:21:49.400 --> 0:21:52.760 that facilitated her adoption. This is how she finds a 0:21:52.800 --> 0:21:57.280 social worker named Marty Cardona who lives nearby in New York. 0:21:58.920 --> 0:22:02.119 I called her up and she said she was willing 0:22:02.160 --> 0:22:05.480 to meet me, so I drove up to go talk 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:10.280 to her. At the time, I had just been in 0:22:10.320 --> 0:22:14.679 this car accident and I hadn't replaced my car yet, 0:22:14.800 --> 0:22:19.120 and so I basically bought this car and then hadn't 0:22:19.160 --> 0:22:20.119 really driven it. 0:22:20.160 --> 0:22:23.440 And then I drove in this I wouldn't say snowstorm, 0:22:23.480 --> 0:22:25.680 but I drove through some snow. 0:22:26.000 --> 0:22:29.440 That was rather intimidating at the time, but maybe I'm 0:22:29.440 --> 0:22:33.840 diseasily intimidated to a panera bread and we sat down 0:22:34.600 --> 0:22:38.040 and talked. So at the time I was looking for 0:22:38.080 --> 0:22:42.240 something really specific. I had gone with a mission, and 0:22:42.840 --> 0:22:47.160 my mission was that I was going to see if 0:22:47.200 --> 0:22:52.080 she could help me obtain the resident ID number for 0:22:52.720 --> 0:22:57.280 my birth mother, because with the resident ID number and 0:22:58.480 --> 0:23:03.359 some other information. You can usually find an address on 0:23:03.440 --> 0:23:08.440 someone in Korea, so Marty didn't have that member. What 0:23:08.640 --> 0:23:14.160 she did have for me was essentially a story. So 0:23:14.400 --> 0:23:20.040 the story was about her own daughter, and so Marty 0:23:20.160 --> 0:23:24.600 was a social worker, but she had also adopted a 0:23:24.640 --> 0:23:31.000 couple of children, and her daughter, Julie, had wanted to find. 0:23:30.800 --> 0:23:31.520 Her birth mother. 0:23:31.800 --> 0:23:36.840 You unlike me, Julie figured that out at a pretty 0:23:36.880 --> 0:23:41.280 young age though, when she was maybe twelve or thirteen, 0:23:42.119 --> 0:23:47.400 she and Marty went to Korea and they went to 0:23:47.520 --> 0:23:53.919 have dinner with Julie's birth mother, and so Julie essentially 0:23:54.800 --> 0:23:58.960 sat down and lived at her mother for the first 0:23:59.000 --> 0:24:03.359 time since she had and a baby really and said, 0:24:03.760 --> 0:24:05.320 I've thought of you every. 0:24:05.160 --> 0:24:07.240 Day of my life. And so. 0:24:08.800 --> 0:24:13.600 When Marty told me this, she shook her head. It 0:24:13.640 --> 0:24:18.639 was the sort of rueful gesture, I guess, and she 0:24:18.720 --> 0:24:22.800 knew her daughter really well worse. And so the way 0:24:22.800 --> 0:24:27.040 that she put it was that he knew that Julie 0:24:27.160 --> 0:24:30.720 had said that she thought of her mother every day 0:24:30.720 --> 0:24:32.439 of her life, and what she needed in that moment 0:24:33.560 --> 0:24:39.480 was for her mother to say that back to her. Instead, 0:24:39.680 --> 0:24:45.040 what her mother said Julie again only maybe twelve or 0:24:45.080 --> 0:24:49.240 thirteen years old. Was everything turned out as it should have. 0:24:49.720 --> 0:24:50.840 You grew up in America. 0:24:51.400 --> 0:24:54.840 You're healthy, you're strong, everything turned out as it should be. 0:24:56.119 --> 0:24:59.160 So that was pretty devastating for Julie at the time. 0:25:00.080 --> 0:25:04.040 But then many years passed and at some point Julie's 0:25:04.040 --> 0:25:08.320 mother wanted to see her, and so she wrote Julia 0:25:08.320 --> 0:25:11.320 a letter and she asked if she could come to America, 0:25:12.200 --> 0:25:15.439 and she said, I know that I wasn't there for 0:25:15.520 --> 0:25:18.840 you when I should have been, but please let me 0:25:18.880 --> 0:25:19.240 see you. 0:25:20.080 --> 0:25:20.960 I'll do anything. 0:25:21.440 --> 0:25:24.800 I'll even stand behind a plant if you want me to. 0:25:25.000 --> 0:25:27.400 I won't tell anyone who I am. 0:25:27.560 --> 0:25:28.600 I just want to see you. 0:25:29.800 --> 0:25:33.280 But at that point, Julie had already been hurt for 0:25:33.400 --> 0:25:35.639 many years, and she was an adult now, and she 0:25:35.760 --> 0:25:38.480 decided that she did not want to see her mother. 0:25:39.480 --> 0:25:43.240 So Marty told me that story essentially as a sort 0:25:43.240 --> 0:25:47.000 of warning. You know, she wanted me to know that 0:25:47.800 --> 0:25:52.840 sometimes people think that they want to know and it 0:25:52.960 --> 0:25:55.160 ends up being really painful. 0:25:59.800 --> 0:26:03.840 This heartbreaking story does not dissuade or deter Tracy from 0:26:03.840 --> 0:26:07.719 her search. She does not do one, but six DNA 0:26:07.800 --> 0:26:12.760 tests in pursuit of answers. Nothing is yielding results. There 0:26:12.840 --> 0:26:16.639 certainly are no close relations coming up. But finally, on 0:26:16.680 --> 0:26:20.719 the sixth test, there's a faint hint of possibility, a 0:26:20.720 --> 0:26:25.320 man named Philip, who is her third cousin's father. Pretty distant, 0:26:25.760 --> 0:26:29.320 but still a possible gateway into the truth of her maternity. 0:26:31.160 --> 0:26:37.720 I had been operating on the premise that if I 0:26:38.320 --> 0:26:44.360 found a location on my birth mother and she was alive, 0:26:44.880 --> 0:26:46.680 and that if I went to see her, then I 0:26:46.680 --> 0:26:50.200 would talk to my parents about it. But in some capacity, 0:26:50.280 --> 0:26:54.480 it didn't feel particularly like there was anything to say 0:26:55.119 --> 0:26:58.680 before I knew whether that would happen, because nothing. 0:26:58.600 --> 0:27:01.480 Was materially changing. I had an. 0:27:01.400 --> 0:27:06.760 Interest in meeting this person, but I don't know it 0:27:06.880 --> 0:27:08.960 just it didn't seem like there. 0:27:08.920 --> 0:27:12.399