Two sisters separated at birth 40 years ago in a South Korean orphanage were hired and reunited at a Florida hospital, reported the Guardian. It is a tale with a tragic beginning of abandonment by an alcoholic father and a happy ending of an American adoption and reunion.
According to the Guardian, Meagan Hughes, who was born Eun-Sook, remembers little about her biological mother or her life prior to her American adoption in 1976. Her half-sister Holly Hoyle O'Brien, born Pok-nam Shin, was adopted by an American couple in 1978 when she was 9 years old.
The two sisters grew up 300 miles apart as O'Brien lived with her family in Virginia and Hughes in New York.
Fast-forward nearly 40 years to a hospital hiring nursing assistants in Sarasota, Fla. First, O'Brien was hired. Three months later, Hughes was brought on to work on the same floor and the same shift, 7 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., noted the Herald-Tribune.
Fast friends, the two women discovered shared coincidences: both had "abandonment" listed on their orphanage papers, both were adopted by American families in the late 1970s and both had the same Korean last name, Shin.
"I was like, this is too good to be true," said O'Brien. "I said we've got to do the DNA test, it's the only way we'll get the truth out of the whole thing."
The two took a DNA mouth swab test, mailed the kits to Canada and received the results in August. It was a match!
"I was trembling, I was so excited. I was ecstatic," explained O'Brien.
Her sister said: "I just want to say thank you to you, Holly, for never ever giving up looking for me. So thank you so much for that. You gave me that closure that I've been looking for... all those years."
See the interview on the Herald-Tribune website.