‘Nobody Knew Anything’: Manteca Woman Reunited With Family Through DNA Test Kit

3 years ago 418

MANTECA (CBS13) – A Manteca pistillate wanted to cognize astir who she is and wherever she comes from, truthful she took a 23andMe DNA trial to find out. When she got the results earlier this summer, she learned she had household members lone miles away.

Flipping done a photograph album, Barbara Austin looks astatine pictures of radical she ne'er met until 2021.

“If I would person conscionable recovered them a small sooner,” Austin said. “You ne'er what your DNA is going to accidental astir you, oregon who you’re related to, you know?”

For years, Austin had wanted to instrumentality a DNA trial to larn much astir her ancestry. She was ne'er adjacent with her mom, and didn’t cognize overmuch astir her dad. Raised by her aunt, she was anxious to spot what she’d find erstwhile the results came in.

“I didn’t cognize who helium was, and this was each I had to spell on,” she said.

The kit connected her to cousins and extended family, hopeful to link with her father. She was disheartened to larn her dada passed successful 2014.

“You hold truthful agelong for idiosyncratic to fig retired who they are,” Austin said. “Hear their voice, spot their face, inquire them questions. It ne'er got to happen. Nobody knew I existed. Nobody knew anything.”

An overwhelming hunt for her father, though, introduced her to half-siblings. Her sister Monique Navarette was 1 of them, shocked to larn she had much family.

“It was a surprise,” Navarette said. “I don’t cognize however to picture each the emotions and feelings that came with it.”

What was an added astonishment – however adjacent the household lived to each other. Mere miles distant successful Modesto, some Navarette and Austin unknowingly crossed paths earlier successful life.

“We were successful the aforesaid schools and we didn’t adjacent cognize each other,” Navarette said.

Both are gladsome to cognize each different now. Austin and her household gathered for a potluck this month, wherever she was capable to larn much astir her dad’s communicative and fixed a photograph medium to cherish for years to come.

“I consciousness a consciousness of alleviation now,” Austin said. “This section is yet solved.”

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These distant household members person present turned friends, and Austin yet has immoderate closure to a lifelong mystery.