Advertisement

Siblings abandoned at birth are reunited through DNA

Siblings abandoned at birth are reunited through DNA

Two siblings met for the first time last weekend.

In 1981, Janet Barnicoat, then an infant, was abandoned in an alley in Lawndale, California.

Five years later, newborn Dean Hundorf was found abandoned on a porch in the Pacific Palisades.

No one knew they were siblings.

The infants were adopted into loving families. Barnicoat ended up living in Hesperia, California. Hundorf calls Minneapolis, Wisconsin, home.

As adults, both Barnicoat and Hundorf became curious about their origins, and submitted their DNA to Ancestry.com. Neither expected the DNA to connect them with a sibling.

“I was interested in my ethnic makeup,” Hundorf told CBS Los Angeles. “And this was something I never would have dreamed of.”

On Saturday night, the brother and sister met for the first time at Los Angeles International Airport.

“I’ve waited my whole life for this.” Barnicoat said of meeting her brother. “And I know he has too.”

“It’s still unreal to me,” Hundorf said at the tearful reunion. “I don’t know what feelings I’m feeling. I never thought this day would come.”

Handoff is now excited to meet the nieces and nephews he didn’t know he had.

“I’m fulfilled now. I’m complete now,” Barnicoat told KCAL9’s Christy Fajardo. “Overwhelmed with joy.”

On Monday, the brother-sister duo went to the happiest place on earth: Disneyland.