Chris Schauble “couldn’t have had a better childhood,” but the mystery of where he came from was always in the back of his mind.
The 44-year-old anchor of KTLA 5 Morning News in Los Angeles had never needed his parents to tell him he was adopted; as the only African-American child in his family, he knew from a young age that he originally came from other parents. But his past, like the pasts of many who were adopted during a time when the process was closed, lay locked up beyond his reach, shrouded in that mystery.
Finally, Schauble, an Emmy Award-winning journalist, decided it was time to track down his own story.
Schauble’s Journey to Find His Family History
In a six-month quest that began in November, Schauble took viewers along on his journey to find his birth family. He took a multipronged approach, hiring investigator Jay Rosenzweig of Birthparentfinder.com to help dig through the paperwork in his birth state of Florida.
He also enlisted AncestryDNA to help him sort out what he calls his “genetic jigsaw” and figure out whether he was actually half African-American and half Italian-American, as the Schaubles had been told back in 1971 when they brought him home. The results of his test came back with some real surprises: AncestryDNA revealed Schauble’s ethnic ancestry to be 35 percent African and 60 percent European—including 15 percent from the Italy/Greece region.
“Thousands of adoptees are taking back their identify with these types of DNA tests,” Schauble noted. Now his own had brought him one step closer to his origins.
But the biggest hurdle remained: getting his Florida birth records unsealed. He argued his case to a magistrate in the Sunshine State, explaining that he wanted to explore his family’s medical history to find out whether his knee problems might stem from a genetic disposition for degenerative arthritis. From there, all he could do was wait while the judge decided whether Minnie Jenkins, from the Florida Adoption Reunion Registry, would be allowed to look at Schauble’s birth records and then contact any family members to see if they were open to meeting him.
Fortunately, the answer was yes. On all fronts.
Schauble’s Trip to his Ancestral Home
Schauble’s trip to Madison, Florida, to visit the family of his biological father, John Charles Robinson, filled him with emotion. “I’ve answered questions that people should be able to answer; I’ve found beauty in those answers, and people who could not be more loving or welcoming,” he said through tears at the gravesite of his father, who died in 1995. His older half-brother, J. C., welcomed him literally with open arms, showed Schauble pictures of their dad, and even told him about the time he was released from jail after being accused of murder.
Schauble’s journey, though, had one more stop: a flight to Texas to visit his biological mother, 82-year-old Virginia Robinson. Virginia gave up Schauble, whom she had originally named “Mark,” after three days because she knew that J. C. Sr. could not handle raising her son, mainly due to a drinking problem. But as painful as the decision was, she knew she’d meet him again someday. “I knew the good Lord wouldn’t let me pass from this earth without knowing you were all right,” she told Schauble during a tearful meeting 44 years in the making.
During his entire journey, Schauble took pains to mention at every step that none of it would have been possible without the help and support of his “real” family, the Schaubles. He also was happy to say that his series of reports on KTLA has led to around 40 people to start their own journeys to find their birth families, which is why he decided to be so open with the process to begin with. He now talks to both Virginia and J. C. weekly.
“It’s going to be a growth process for me,” he said, but he’s happy that it turned out as well as it did. “My history fills a hole in my heart.”