A New York woman had a family reunion on Wednesday with her father that came after 50 years of searching for the man living on the other side of the country. It took an Ancestry.com DNA test to bring the pair together for the first time.
Lan Thi Kim Do, who was born and raised in southern Vietnam, had grown up only knowing one fact about her father: he was an American soldier who served during the Vietnam War.
According to ABC affiliate 6 News, Lan’s mother left her daughter to be raised by her stepfather at the age of 10, and her chance of finding out any more about her biological father all but diminished.
It wasn’t until two months ago when urged by a colleague at the Mayo Clinic, did she decide to submit her genetic information to Ancestry.com.
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Six weeks later, she received a match.
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The genealogy website matched her with 72-year-old Wayne Vernon Brown of Los Angeles, which the site identified as her father.
When they learned the information, Lan and her colleague Beka Berhanu reached out to Brown on Facebook but did not receive a message for a while — he was on a ski vacation with his son.
“I had no idea her mom was pregnant when I left Vietnam,” he told NBC affiliate KTTC.
The pair began talking over the phone and in April, Brown asked Lan to do one more DNA test to ensure there was no doubt of their relationship.
It was a near perfect match. Brown said the test came back with a 99.999 per cent probability, the Post Bulletin reported.
“I opened [the results] up and looked at it. I closed the application, I called her, and I say, ‘Hello, my child. How are you?'”
Since then, the pair has kept in constant contact through Facebook, Facetime and phone calls over the past several weeks until they decided they wanted to meet in person.
For Lan, knowing she was to meet her biological father, could mean finding the rest of her family, as her last connection was to her mother and half-siblings in southern Vietnam decades ago.
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When the day finally arrived, it didn’t go exactly according to plan. Brown’s flight was actually early, so he had to wait a little longer before seeing his daughter in person for the first time.
“I have never seen my daughter. Never seen her,” he said in the airport in Rochester on Wednesday. “I’m a little nervous. I’m anxious to see her, and I think we’ll spend a lot of time catching up.”
Shortly after, Lan came through the airport’s sliding glass doors.
“Is that her? There she is,” Brown said as he goes to greet her. “There’s my child.”
The pair embrace with a hug, as Lan told him, “Father, I love you.” Brown replies and asks her if she’s OK, to which she says, “Yeah.”
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They were also joined by Lan’s daughter, Darlene Doan, who said she was nervous about the meeting but was now happy that she’ll “get to know him better.”
Lan continues to hold her father in an emotional hug, holding back tears.
“I’m so happy. Very happy,” she said.
After the initial meeting, the pair left the airport. Asked where they were going, Lan said “home.”
“I’m anxious to spend some time trying to catch up for the last 50 years,” Brown said.
According to ABC, he said he’ll be visiting until at least Monday.
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