Teen Panics After Discovering The Truth About His Adoptive Parents
As anyone who has traveled for a long period of time can confirm that home is where the heart is. While adventuring around the globe is all well and good, there's something safe and comforting about returning to your own personal space — most of the time. For Steve Lickteig, however, his home turned into a waking nightmare. As a teenager, Lickteig learned a startling truth about his adoptive parents that shook him to his core. Faced with that terrible realization, he fled his home, hoping to leave the dark secret far behind him.
Shadow Hanging Over Him
Growing up, Steve Lickteig was part of a big happy family. While he knew that he was adopted, that wasn't a problem; if anything, it made things seem even more serendipitous.
The First Meeting
According to Steve's foster parents, they found him in an orphanage as a baby; no one was sure who his biological parents were. Destiny, it seemed, was guiding the family's hand.
Welcoming One More
Although the Lickteigs had plenty of children, they couldn't say no to baby Steve. Without a second thought, the began the adoption process. He was simply meant to be part of the family!
The Perfect Life
Once all the details were hashed out, Steve came home and began growing up with the Lickteigs. Everything seemed pretty perfect; he attended school, had a loving home, and was surrounded by brothers and sisters.
The Future Beckons
Eventually, Steve neared the end of high school. With graduation on the horizon and a military career waiting beyond that, he knew his life was about to change. A terrible surprise, however, was also waiting for the teenager.
Secrets Are Spilled
On the night before graduation, Steve was hanging out with some of his friends. Everything was going great until two other guys, Vance and Alan, told Steve that there was something he needed to know.
His Biological Mother
Alan and Vance explained that they actually knew the identity of Steve's biological mother. While Steve wasn't sure how his friends could have found her without a DNA test, he couldn't believe what they said next.
Her Name Is Joanie
They explained that someone named Joanie was actually Steve's real mom. There was one problem, though. Steve already knew exactly who that was; Joanie was his older foster sister!
Common Knowledge
To make matters worse, Alan and Vance weren't the only ones who knew the Lickteig family secret. Apparently the entire town had apparently shared the gossip, but no one ever told Steve.
His Troubled Mind
Despite that revelation, Steve didn't immediately react. While he tried to put the possibility out of his mind, he couldn't ignore the truth. Eventually, he needed to confront the woman who raised him from his earliest days.
Caught in the Act
One night, Steve's foster mom caught him in a "sort of compromising situation." While that proved to be an awkward moment, it gave him the perfect opportunity to learn the truth.
The Abstinence Talk
"The next morning, my mom turned on one of those television preachers and she turned the TV up really loud and the preacher was teaching abstinence," Steve told NPR. Then, he laid his cards on the table...
Steve Forces A Confrontation
"Oh, did you play this same thing for Joanie?" he asked. "Did you teach Joanie abstinence," you know, "as she got pregnant with me?" While his mother tried to deny it, there was no going back.
California Dreaming
It turned out that, as a young woman, Joanie clashed with her mother, Mary Jane. When she was 20-years old, Joanie finally had enough; she left home, set out on her own, and moved to California.
Her Leading Man
In California, she met a charming older man with an alluring accent. Before long, Joanie was pregnant with his child. Their relationship, however, wouldn't have a fairy tale ending.
Her Only Option
As a young woman who was pregnant out of wedlock, Joanie returned home. Since her relationship would have caused a scandal in suburbia, Mary Jane, had a solution to hide the illegitimate child in plain sight.
Fake Adoption
Rather than letting Joanie raise Steve, Mary Jane decided to claim him as her "adopted" son. While everyone around town knew the truth, it gave everyone plausible deniability; no one, other than Alan and Vance, could bring themselves to spill the beans.
Making Peace
Understandably, that revelation had a major impact on Steve; everything he thought he knew about his life had been a lie. After leaving home, he and Joanie found some peace. Blood, after all, is thicker than water.
Mending The Bridge
"[Our relationship is] not the best, but it's not horrible, either," he explained on the Today Show in 2019. "It's just been hard for me. I feel like we are ultimately going to be in a good place." But their example encouraged other adoptees to seek out their biological families and share their stories too, but it was another grown man's story that especially touched Steve.
Forced Apart
A man named Guerrero explained that ever since he was separated from his mother he felt something was missing. A piece of him was gone that, in time, he knew he had to reclaim. The same could be said for Guerrero’s mother too, who was heartbroken when circumstances forced the pair apart.
Searching For Mom
But even after almost five decades, mother and son kept hoping to meet again. For Guerrero, that search started when he used several different methods to locate his birth mother. And the questing son’s efforts paid off when he saw a photo of a particular woman and knew he had found her.
Long-Awaited Reunion
When Guerrero confirmed the woman in the picture was indeed his mother, he reached out to contact her. Thankfully, she was ecstatic to hear from him, and the pair arranged to meet. All that remained, then, was their reunion, which took Guerrero back to his place of birth. There, he experienced one of the most emotional moments of his life.
Too Young
Guerrero was born in Austin, Texas, at Brackenridge Hospital in June 1972. However, the event was both a joyous occasion and an emotionally shattering one. That’s because Guerrero’s mother was just 14 when she gave birth. As a result, she chose adoption for the baby, so it was also the day the pair had to say goodbye.
A Life Of His Own
But 47 years have passed since then, and a lot can change over the decades. For example, Guerrero no longer lives in Austin, having since moved to Abingdon, Maryland. During that time, he married a woman called Jennifer and got a rather unusual job. He, in fact herds goats for a living.
Professional Goatherd
To be more specific, Guerrero is the lead goatherd for the Department of Transportation in Maryland. According to Facebook, that means he “herds goats as a vocational activity.” The social media site also goes on the describe the position as “similar to a shepherd who herds sheep.” So the man is clearly an animal lover, too.
Adoption Network
Unlike Guerrero’s job, however, his adoption situation isn’t unique. Indeed, according to the Adoption Network, American families adopt 135,000 children annually, and there are over a million adopted children in the U.S. alone. And that’s not including the 428,000-strong children in foster care who struggle to find a forever home. Some, in fact, might never find a willing family.
One Of The Lucky Ones
Thankfully, over half the infants placed in private adoptions, however, are snapped up in the first month of their lives. And although it’s unclear how many families are waiting to adopt, it could be as many as two million households. So, it sounds like Guerrero was one of the lucky children who found their way into a waiting home.
Missing That Bond
Forty-seven years ago, Guerrero’s 14-year-old mother thought someone else could provide her son with a better life. With this in mind, she placed him with an adopted family, but he always felt he was missing something. “There’s a connection, a bond with your mother,” he told CBS Baltimore in 2019. “I can’t really explain it. I’ve never had it.”
Difficult Search
And so Guerrero started searching for his biological mother, as he revealed in an interview with Austin’s KXAN News in 2019. “I’ve been looking for her really hard since Christmas of last year,” he explained. It can’t have been an easy search, either. There are often stipulations in adoption that limit information gathering, especially on the parent’s side.
Texas Law
For example, to arrange an adoption, the birth parents must first relinquish their legal rights to the child. Other laws vary from state to state, but in Texas, adoptees can’t easily access the original copy of their birth certificate, even when they reach adulthood. There are, however, a couple of exceptions to this rule.
Skirting The System
An adoptee’s first option is to contact the court that originally dealt with their adoption and ask for their birth certificate to be released. There is, however, a second way to obtain the record, but it only became available in 2005. If an adoptee knows the name of their biological parent, they can then claim an non-certified birth document. But what if your family tree is a mystery? Luckily, there are a few ways around this problem.
DNA Kit
One of the ways around unidentified birth parents is to investigate your genealogy yourself, and that’s exactly what Guerrero did. But where do you even begin researching something like that? Well for this adoptee, it all started with a Christmas gift that proved invaluable to the search ahead. Specifically, someone gave Guerrero a DNA testing kit.
Sending In His Test
The kit was actually for a website called Ancestry.com, which helps users explore their family history. According to its website, once you order a DNA test the process is simple. You provide a saliva sample and send it to the organization via the postal service. After which, the company’s genealogists compare it with 700,000 other samples worldwide.
Cutting Edge Service
“AncestryDNA is a cutting edge testing service that utilizes some of the latest autosomal testing technology to revolutionize the way you discover your family history,” the Ancestry.com website states. “This service combines advanced DNA science with the world’s largest online family history resource to predict your genetic ethnicity and help you find new family connections.”
Connecting Relatives
Ancestry.com continues, “[The test] maps ethnicity going back multiple generations and provides insight into such possibilities as: what region of Europe are my ancestors from, or, am I likely to have East Asian heritage? AncestryDNA can also help identify relationships with unknown relatives through a dynamic list of DNA matches.”
Turning To Social Media
The process can take anywhere from six to eight weeks, after which the organization will provide your results. But that was just the start of Guerrero’s journey. Indeed, it took more than a DNA database to locate his long-lost mother. That’s when he turned to the social media site Facebook for further answers.
Reunion Group
Love it or hate it, one thing is certain about social media: it puts you in touch with people. In Guerrero’s case, he tracked down a Facebook group designed to reunite adoptees with their biological parents. In turn, he also managed to contact someone experienced with putting together family trees.
Instant Recognition
The person in question is a genealogist called Lois, who helped Guerrero find his mother. “Once I found her, I saw her picture,” the adoptee revealed to KXAN News in Austin in 2019. “[And] I knew it was her. That hole that I had, it started to fill up. I can’t wait to meet her.”
Heading Back To Austin
Guerrero then spoke to his mother on the phone, and at some point, they arranged to meet up. So he headed back to Austin, purchased some flowers and prepared to see his biological mother for the first time. Fortunately, news crews caught their reunion on camera, and it was heart-warming.
Emotional Reunion
The video shows Guerrero’s mom rushing up to him with an “Oh my God,” and throwing her arms around him. “It’s so good to see you finally,” she cries as she holds him tightly. Their meeting is so emotional that it brings them both to tears, which continue throughout their subsequent interview.
Feeling Complete
“The last time I saw [Guerrero] was when I held him in my arms as a baby,” the mother said of her son. “And I was just a 14-year-old-teenager, and it was very difficult to let him go.” As for Guerrero, he explained during the interview that meeting his mom has completed him.
Time To Bond
“For me, it’s filled a hole I’ve had in my heart for a long time,” a tearful Guerrero said. “I’m whole again,” he continued, hugging his mother and breaking down. “It’s okay,” she replied, “You’re here now, we’re together now.” The pair then spent five days in Austin getting to know each other.
30 Years Apart
Guerrero’s happy reunion isn’t the only joy-filled ending that DNA tests have helped produce, though. Indeed, an alternate genealogy website to Ancestry.com, MyHeritage, introduced an Ohio mother to her daughter after 30 years apart. It all began when Sue Bailey, née Ellis, discovered she was pregnant quite late into her term.
Just Not Ready
In fact, the mom-to-be was seven-and-a-half months pregnant when she found out she was carrying a child. In March 2019, Bailey – who is now 56 – told the AJC newspaper that, unfortunately, she didn’t feel properly prepared. She said, “I was not equipped to deal with a baby. It’s not that I didn’t love her.”
Leaving It Open
As a result, Bailey placed her daughter in an adoption program when she was born. However, the new mother always considered that her child might be curious about her beginnings later in life. “I made my choice on April 7, 1987,” Bailey revealed. “It was her quest, if she wanted to come find me.”
Wanting Answers
Shirley and Melvin Behrmann then brought up Bailey’s biological daughter as their own and named her Jenna. She grew up well-cared for and loved, but her adopted parents didn’t hide her origins. She told AJC, “They always told me I was adopted. I still had questions. I had to have answers.”
Sue Ellis
Behrmann’s search began in earnest in 2005, when her adopted mother passed away. Armed with her adoption records, she managed to glean a few scant tidbits of info. She also discovered her birth mother’s maiden name, despite an attempt to conceal it with Wite-Out on the paperwork. The name Sue Ellis was, in fact, just visible when exposed to light.
DNA To The Rescue
However, Behrmann’s quest didn’t get off to a promising start. Her search for a Sue Ellis proved fruitless. “I could never find anything,” she added, attributing the lack of success to her birth mother’s common names. But DNA technology succeeded where traditional methods failed, thanks to assistance from MyHeritage.
Getting Closer
The family tree organization contacted Behrmann offering to provide a DNA test for free, which she gratefully accepted. Fortunately, the results turned up some information that her earlier efforts couldn’t. They pointed her to Massachusetts where her biological great aunt resided, who had additional breadcrumbs for the adoptee’s trail. She then discovered another family member.
A Half-Sister
To be more specific, Behrmann’s great aunt revealed that the adoptee had an uncle residing in Columbus, O.H. That was her next port of call, but it unfortunately wasn’t a direct line to her birth mom. On the other hand, the uncle did have another piece of the puzzle. It turned out that she had a half-sister called Rachel who had a social media account.
Contacting Mom
Fortunately, Bailey had the foresight to tell her subsequent children that they had a half-sister out there somewhere. So when Behrmann contacted Rachel on Facebook, it was probably less of a shock than it could have been. Rachel gave Behrmann her mother’s phone number and finally, 30 years after her adoption, she had a one-to-one with her biological mom.
Shockingly Close
“Within an hour, I was talking to [Behrmann] on the phone,” Bailey told AJC. “That was an awkward conversation.” On the other hand, however, it wasn’t an unexpected one. As she elaborated, “To be honest with you, I was not surprised [that she called].” It was shocking just how close her daughter lived, though.
Daughter's Choice
In fact, Behrmann was just 45 minutes away by road in Loveland, O.H. So, how did the family react to the mother-daughter reunion, and how do they feel about it now? Bailey always maintained that she wouldn’t contact Behrmann out of respect for her life with her adopted family. She left that decision in her daughter’s hands.
Blending Families
“[Behrmann] was their daughter,” Bailey said of Shirley and Melvin. But the adoptee herself had more than one more surprise for Bailey. She had a five-year-old daughter of her own called Bonnie. That made the 56-year-old a grandmother for the 11th time! And of course, Bailey had kids of her own to introduce to her long-lost child to as well.
Excited To Reunite
Bailey’s son, 23-year-old Aaraon, is one of them, and he couldn’t wait to meet his sibling. “I always knew she existed,” he revealed, “I just didn’t think it was going to happen. I’m ecstatic.” For her part, the adoptee didn’t know what to expect when she first called her birth mom, or how she would react.
Completely Accepting
Behrmann said, “When you’re adopted, you have no idea of the background that led up to your adoption. I didn’t know if [Bailey] would be accepting.” Now that she’s met her biological family members, though, the adoptee knows that she worried needlessly. “She was [accepting], and everyone in her family was completely accepting.”
Full Circle
Indeed, since Behrmann found her birth mother, she’s realized she was missing something all along. “I feel I’ve come full circle,” she told the AJC. “I feel complete.” As for Bailey, she hopes to see more of her daughter and granddaughter in the future, stating, “I expect a lot more visits.”
The Future Of Connection
As technology advances and becomes more accessible, it seems that DNA testing is integral to uniting families. That’s something that Behrmann can attest to. “If it wasn’t for the test, I would probably still be looking for [Bailey],” she explained. Between that and the connection to people the internet provides, there’s still hope for people searching for their parents and children.
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