Think about this: What is the most surprising phone call you could get in your life?
How about this one: Out of the clear blue, a complete stranger is claiming that you have a brother you’ve never met. In fact, you had no idea he even existed.
That was the call Bridgette got on March 16, 2015.
Unexpected Call
She had just gotten home from work when the phone rang and a woman asked for Bridgette—only she used Bridgette’s maiden name. Nobody uses her maiden name. Then the caller asked if her father was Gilbert Valdez. Bridgette’s father had passed away 16 years ago.
“So, nobody asks me that either,” Bridgette explains.
The caller introduced herself as Mary and said she was a confidential intermediary helping an adoptee locate his biological family. They thought Bridgette was the man’s biological sister.
Mary explained that Bridgette would have to sign a consent form before she could reveal anything about her supposed brother. In the meantime, Bridgette quizzed the woman on the phone. It seemed odd that the intermediary wouldn’t know her father had died, but she did know his birth date, what his family’s economic status had been, their ethnic heritage, her grandparents’ names and occupation, even that her father had had an appendectomy.
“And it’s all true,” Bridgette muses. “As she’s going through it, I’m watching the filmstrip of my dad’s younger years playback in my memory.”
Taking a DNA Test
Bridgette agreed to sign the consent form. Then, while she was waiting to hear back from Mary, she decided the first thing she needed to do was get this new “brother” to take a DNA test. Once the consent was approved by a judge, Mary called Bridgette and David, her bother, separately to share their contact information. David reached out to Bridgette first, and during their first call, Bridgette asked if it was ok to try a DNA test.
David was completely open to the idea. “Yeah,” he said. “Let’s see what it tells us.”
“Even though I was excited to talk to him, [the DNA test] was really the last thing I needed to validate that this was true. It helped me to stop pinching myself, thinking this was a dream,” Bridgette says. Their results came back the day before their first scheduled meeting. David showed up as a DNA match with a relationship of “Close Family,” exactly where a half-brother would.
“Personally, I found that was a relief for me,” Bridgette says. “I didn’t want to go down this path of someone who had potentially made a mistake or it’s the wrong person or something like that. I felt like I could open myself more to him after I knew for sure that it was real.”
New Brother: Making up for the Lost Time
Opening themselves to one another is exactly what they’ve done. They met for the first time on May 1, 2015. At this first meeting in a public park, Bridgette describes the connection she felt to her brother as “instantaneous.” Bridgette saw him again over Memorial Day, in June when he travelled with his family to stay with her family, and again in July when both their families travelled to watch David’s son play in a baseball World Series event.
“We’re trying to make up for lost time,” she says.
Bridgette gets mixed reactions when she tells the story. Some people wonder what her brother wants after all this time or why they’re digging up old skeletons.
“But we don’t feel that way at all,” Bridgette says. “It’s just been such a fun, fascinating experience.” She quickly discovered that her brother was a skilled baseball player, much like their dad. They’re both extroverts who love to strike up a conversation, even with strangers. He has two kids who are about the ages of her own. An uncle took David for a ride around his father’s hometown to show him where his dad went to school and used to play. Then he took David to meet his maternal grandmother, whom he talks to all the time now.
Along with his new family, David has found a sense of confidence from the DNA test he and Bridgette took: “I took my DNA test. No matter what anybody tells me, I don’t have to rely on hearsay, I don’t have to rely on stories. I know who my family is.”
In fact, he’s so excited about finding that family, he’s in the process of changing his last name.
Their only regret, aside from the lost time, is that David never got to meet their father.
“I know Dad would have loved him, and I wish we could have the conversation today to better understand what happened back then. Though it wouldn’t change how we feel about each other today. We are so incredibly lucky to have found each other and know that nothing can take away the memories we are creating with our families now. I would have never imagined a bond could be so strong in just a couple months!
“I love him,” she says of her new big brother. “I’m glad he’s in our lives.”
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