The memory is fleeting but Josh Schultz remembers speaking to his father once. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22987" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-300x300.jpg" alt="Josh's quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Joshs-quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /> 
It was a phone call, and Josh was just a boy. He can’t conjure up everything his dad said, or what his voice was like. He just knows they talked.
“I do remember my father said he was mailing me a Christmas present,” Josh said. “I waited years to no avail.”
It was the only contact he ever had with his father.
When Josh was about 10 he was told his father had been killed in New York, shot three times. His father had been involved in criminal activity, and that was part of the reason Josh’s mom had left him.
“I was so young I don’t think I even realized what it meant,” said Josh, who is now 36 and works in IT.
Raised by his mom, Josh never had contact with his father’s side of the family. Because he and his mother moved and so too did his father’s family, it made it almost impossible for him to find them once he started looking as an adult.
“I searched for years,” he said. “I used various different methods but I would always hit a brick wall.”
Mostly using public records searches and the small bits of information his mother knew about his dad and his dad’s family. At one point Josh was able to track down his father’s death certificate. Along with the cause of death – shot in the head and neck – the death certificate stated that no one claimed the body or his father’s belongings.
“It was just another brick wall,” he said.
In 2014, Josh used 23andMe for the first time. He wanted to learn more about his ancestry.
“You know my main curiosity was where my roots came from,” he said. “I had all these question marks. I didn’t really know anything about my father’s family. I was just curious about where my genes came from.”
But almost right away he started seeing close relative matches that he didn’t recognize. He connected with one of the second cousins he found through 23andMe’s DNA Relatives tool. The two began exchanging family information and quickly Josh’s second cousin connected him to an aunt living in Texas and then to his father’s brother, who lived no more than half an hour away in South Florida.
They spoke first on the phone and then in person. They look alike and were able to share family stories. Josh learned a little more about his father and his father’s family. At one point Josh’s uncle made it to Josh’s daughter’s first birthday.
“It’s not just meeting him, but he’s got kids too so I’ve got cousins now,” Josh said. “The family resemblance is kind of funny.”
Looking at how much he’s been able to learn about himself and his family has prompted Josh to encourage others to try 23andMe, not just those searching for family like him, but others who could help contribute to new genetic discoveries.
“I would love to see as many people sign up for the service as possible,” he said. “I think it’d be wonderful to compare more genomes and isolate the causes of diseases.”

23andMe Blog

23andMe Blog Team

Breaking Through A Brick Wall

Of course he knew he was adopted but that only made Tony Mercer wonder more <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-23002" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-300x300.jpg" alt="Tony Mercer Quote" width="300" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-300x300.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-150x150.jpg 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-768x768.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-880x880.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-271x271.jpg 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-372x372.jpg 372w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-574x574.jpg 574w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote-980x980.jpg 980w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-Mercer-Quote.jpg 1000w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />about what made him so tall, what made his thumbs so stubby, and where he got his passion for playing the piano.
“My adoptive family was very caring and supportive as I was growing up, but I never felt completely …integrated,” said Tony, a professional pianist and church music director. “My personality and interests and theirs were just not quite the same.”
He loves his family, but he also knows that there are differences that can only be explained by genetics. So, Tony decided to use 23andMe to learn a little bit more about himself – information he said he didn’t think he could learn any other way, he said. He was interested in learning more about his health, the genetics behind some of his traits, and where in the world his ancestors came from. Even though he was adopted and curious about his biological parents, he was still wary about connecting with biological relatives, however.
“Actually, I had no desire to find my biological family,” Tony said. “I had a lot of fear of rejection. I assumed they gave me up for a good reason, and I was afraid of what that reason might be.”
<div id="attachment_23007" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-23007" class="size-medium wp-image-23007" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-300x169.jpg" alt="Tony Mercer, right, with his adoptive dad Lindy Mercer, and his biological mother, Lydia Raska. " width="300" height="169" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-300x169.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-768x432.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-1024x576.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-880x495.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom-1180x664.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Tony-his-dad-and-bio-mom.jpg 1920w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Tony Mercer, right, with his adoptive dad Lindy Mercer, and his biological mother, Lydia Raska.</div>
He’d seen his adoptive brother go through being rejected when he tried to connect to his biological family, and Tony didn’t want to go through the same thing.
“I didn’t want to face that kind of emotional pain,” he said.
It’s a fear that a lot of adoptees go through – the possibility of being doubly rejected by their biological families. (Once when they were given up for adoption, and a second time when they try to connect later in life.) At the same time, there is often an overpowering need to know. Tony skated along that border between simply wanting to know who his mother and father were and the fear of being rejected by them.
So, when he first got his results, he focused on health information, his traits, and his ancestry. He did look at his DNA Relatives, but they were all very distant.
“I hadn’t really expected to find any close relatives,” he said.
But in 2015, all that changed when Tony connected with a first cousin named Melanie. They exchanged some information. Tony figured out they were connected on his maternal side, and he asked if perhaps she had an aunt who had given up a child for adoption in Alaska in 1984.
Yes, she did.
Melanie knew a family secret about her aunt Lydia giving up a baby boy born on the same day,  in the same year, and the same city in Alaska as Tony.
“Besides my mother, she was the only person who knew about me,” said Tony.
He marvels at the luck that the one person who knew about him, besides his biological mother, had also tested with 23andMe.
“I know how lucky I am,” he said.
Things happened very quickly after that. Melanie connected Tony with her aunt Lydia, his biological mother. First, Tony and Lydia had a few email exchanges, then they talked on the phone, and finally she came to Florida to meet him in person.
“As far as Lydia is concerned, just meeting her and seeing that connection … it was very positive and stabilizing for me,” he said.
He saw in her traits he had in himself, and felt connected in a way that he hadn’t ever felt before. It’s not just that he’s tall, has stubby thumbs, and plays the piano, he said.
“Watching her interact with my friends, I immediately noticed that all their positive traits, and the reasons I love all of them, are traits that she has,” said Tony.
He wondered if perhaps his friends were representative of his own search for finding a deep connection to who he was.
“I think it’s just the most awesome thing in the world,” he said.
Tony also was able to learn a bit about his birth and eventually connect to his biological father. He learned that both his biological mother and father came from musical families, which explained a lot.
“Although I was inspired by my adoptive family in North Carolina and Tennessee who were musicians, I think a lot of that inborn talent is genetic,” said Tony, who first started playing piano as a six year old.
Tony’s adoptive father supported his search. His adoptive mother died when he was 16. That also made connecting with his biological mother that much more important, he said. It wasn’t so much that she filled a void he had with losing his mother, but that she is giving him another chance to have a maternal presence in his life.
He also got more context about himself. He’s 6’5” and he learned that all the men in his mom’s family are tall. He learned musical talent and red hair runs in the family. Even how he’s gravitated to work that involves helping others seems to be genetic, he said.
From his mother, Tony was also able to learn more about why he was put up for adoption. That gave him the ability to finally get an answer to the question he always had growing up.
“I have so much closure and peace about my adoption now, and I’ve got an awesome mom back in my life from all this,” he said.
His mother also helped Tony connect to his biological father, and the two have talked on the phone and hope to meet each other in person soon. More recently he met with his biological mother, his aunt, and his biological brother in Las Vegas.
“I know this might not happen for everyone, but I am so thankful to 23andme for making this experience even possible. Technology and science is so crazy these days, and I thank you guys for being on the cutting edge and making this accessible to the public.”

How Lucky I Am

Many adoptees talk about walking through a crowd, looking at the faces of strangers and wondering if they are brushing shoulders with one of their parents or a brother or sister.
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<div id="attachment_22978" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22978" class="size-medium wp-image-22978" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FB_IMG_1444610175227-300x285.jpg" alt="Carole, center, with her sister Felice Weinbaum, left, and Sabrina Goldberg on the right." width="300" height="285" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FB_IMG_1444610175227-300x285.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/FB_IMG_1444610175227.jpg 720w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Carole flanked on her left by sister Felice Weinbaum, and her sister Sabrina Goldberg on her right.</div>
Carole Huber, an adoptee, was no different. That urge to learn more about her biological parents, about her story, never really went away. But decades of wondering left her thinking she would never find her biological family or learn her story. That changed after using 23andMe.


“This brought me to my family,” she said.


In fact, Carole met her mother, without even knowing it, more than 2,500 miles from where she had been placed for adoption.
Carole worked as an oncology nurse at a Florida hospital’s cancer unit. She now thinks hard about one patient in particular, as well as his wife, daughters and sister-in-laws that had visited him daily over his three week hospital stay on her unit.
Many years later, Carole now has trouble remembering his family and any conversations they may have had, but she thinks about them all the time.
“My (biological) mother’s husband was admitted onto the oncology unit. I was the charge nurse so I met my mother, sisters, cousins and aunts. I was in the room with them, but I didn’t know,” she said. “I had no idea.”


She now also wonders about a house, not far from her home.
“It turns out my aunt lives in that house and I pass it every day and I didn’t know,” she said.
Now after learning about her family, those encounters and her daily trips past her aunts house suddenly take on a new meaning.
<div id="attachment_22982" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22982" class="size-medium wp-image-22982" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Carole-and-Family-300x271.jpg" alt="From left to right Carole's daughter Carley, Ryan Kaplan, Carole Huber, Marissa Kaplan and Joan Sinkin, Carole's aunt." width="300" height="271" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Carole-and-Family-300x271.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/Carole-and-Family.jpg 720w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />From left to right Carole&#8217;s daughter Carley, her cousin Ryan Kaplan, Carole Huber, Ryan&#8217;s sister Marissa Kaplan and Joan Sinkin, Carole&#8217;s aunt.</div>
Until recently Carole didn’t know anything about her biological family. Put up for adoption in 1964, she had almost no information about herself. By accident she’d been given her mother’s maiden name, but it was so common to be unhelpful. And her mother had also told her something.
“My mother thought I was part Swedish,” Carole said.
Wanting to learn a little more about herself, Carole turned to 23andMe in 2011.
“So I set on a journey to find my ancestry,” she said. “I never intended to find family.”


She learned that her adoptive mother was not far off with what she knew. Her 23andMe results showed she had about 40 percent Norwegian ancestry and she learned many other things, but initially didn’t connect with any close family. All that changed in 2014 when two new matches popped up in her DNA Relatives on 23andMe.
Carole connected with a brother and sister with whom she shared about 7 percent DNA – meaning a close relative match. For Carole, who’d never before been connected to a close biological relative, this was a big deal.
Messaging the two through 23andMe she explained that she was adopted and that she knew almost nothing about her biological family. Giving them her email address and the one bit of information she did have about her birth mother, her mother’s maiden name. She got a quick message back.
“I’ll get back to you.”
This man and woman turned out to be the children of Carole’s first cousin. Their grandmother is Carole’s aunt, the aunt who lives in the house Carole passed by almost daily on her way to work.
In the meantime, she went to Facebook and looked them up scanning through their family photos.


“Within 15 minutes I was looking at my mother’s face,” she said.


The next morning she heard back from her new found relatives and was brought into a very large family. Her biological mother had only died nine months before, but Carole&#8217;s aunt gave her the backstory of her birth and her biological mother’s life.
She’d been conceived after her birth mother moved to Los Angeles, but that had remained a secret. After Carole was given up for adoption, her mother moved back to New York, ironically not all that far from where Carole grew up.
Within a few months of returning from Los Angeles, Carole’s birth mother met her husband and was married. Soon thereafter, she had two more daughters, Carole’s half sisters. Her aunt told Carole all this only 12 hours after they made their connections through 23andMe.


“She knew about me and she told me I have two sisters,” Carole said.


Right after talking to her aunt, Carole got a call from one of her sisters.
“It was so immediate,” Carole said.

Wondering for more than 50 years about her biological family and where she’d come from, the immediacy of learning was a little shocking for everyone.


“I wasn’t sad or happy, just emotional,” she said. “I know I got very, very lucky, I know that something like this could have gone very differently, but they’ve embraced me and I’m part of their family now.”
Carole now has two sisters, two aunts, an uncle, nine first cousins, and 5 nieces and nephews. Her own three children are intrigued and her adoptive mother is tickled by the whole story.
“She’s very solid in her own shoes,” said Carole about her adoptive mother. “She thinks it’s a hoot.”


Carole’s one regret is that she made this connection just a few months too late and wasn’t able to meet her birth mother. That’s when she thinks of all the times she might have crossed paths with her mother and her aunt. It turns out that her mother and her husband retired to Florida and had lived in the same town as Carole. Her aunt lives there too, only a few blocks from her home.
“My aunt lives in the next development over and I pass her house every single day on the way to work,” she said.
She’s sure she met her mother when her husband was admitted to the oncology unit where she was the charge nurse.
“I met my mother, sisters, aunts and uncles,” she said “But I had no idea.”


Carole feels extremely fortunate and is so grateful for 23andMe who has helped change her life forever.

Hidden in Plain Sight

<div id="attachment_22956" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22956" class="wp-image-22956 size-medium" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_2762-300x203.jpg" alt="IMG_2762" width="300" height="203" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_2762-300x203.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_2762-768x518.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_2762-1024x691.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_2762-880x594.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_2762-1180x797.jpg 1180w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_2762.jpg 1988w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Barbara Weir, right, with her daughter Casey.</div>
Not everyone who tries 23andMe has the same sort of reaction to his or her results as Barbara Weir.


“It’s mind boggling,” said the 87 year-old who lives in San Diego. “Next to marrying my husband and having my children it’s the most exciting thing in my life. It explains so much about me – who and what I am.”
With the help of her daughter, Casey Spaccarelli, a doctor who lives in Chicago, Barbara not only found out that she’d been adopted – something she’d never known – but she also connected with and then met her half brother in person.
“One of the big things for me is that it explains so much,” she said. “Looking back I was nothing like my family. We had different aptitudes and interests. I remember my sister once telling me ‘we’re not alike at all.’ I wanted to be like her and my family, but I just wasn’t.”
<div id="attachment_22955" style="width: 269px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22955" class="wp-image-22955 size-medium" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4728-1-259x300.jpg" alt="IMG_4728-1" width="259" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4728-1-259x300.jpg 259w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4728-1-883x1024.jpg 883w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4728-1-768x891.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4728-1-758x880.jpg 758w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/IMG_4728-1-1017x1180.jpg 1017w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 259px) 100vw, 259px" />Barbara and her brother Marvin soon after meeting for the first time.</div>
The revelation that she’d been adopted and that she had biological family, including a half brother, who had lived in the Boston area, didn’t happen all at once. It started with a lot less drama, with Casey deciding to create a family tree and look at her ancestry. She tested first with another company.
“I did it for fun,” she said.
But very quickly she discovered a lot about herself that didn’t match what she had always been told. For one, she has about a quarter Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry.
“No one in the family knew of any Jewish heritage, only German,” Casey said.
Eventually Barbara tested and it turned out that she has about 50 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. Casey tested with 23andMe thinking that perhaps the result was a mistake. It wasn’t. So she had her mother and her mother’s sister, Nancy, test on 23andMe. Her mother’s results confirmed the Ashkenazi ancestry, but her mother and Nancy didn’t have any overlapping DNA. They weren’t biologically related, according to the test.


“So I told my mom, ‘I think you may have been adopted?’” Casey said. “And she just said, ‘Oh I don’t know, maybe,’ and left it at that.”


But Casey wanted to figure this out. Fortunately she found a close relative connection in her 23andMe results with a name she didn’t recognize. So Casey contacted him. His name is Steve and she told him a little bit about herself and asked if he had any family in the Boston area, where Barbara had been born in the late 1920s.


“He said ‘my whole family is from Boston,’” Casey said.


He was open and helpful. Steve also had a lot of family history that he was willing to share with Casey, names and dates. That all became very important for Casey, who, by triangulating information, figured out that Steve’s grandfather Karl was also likely to be her grandfather, and Barbara’s father. Fortunately Steve’s uncle Marvin was still alive and they decided to talk to him.


“That got the ball rolling,” Casey said.


She knew they were close to solving this mystery. After looking at a few high school photos of Marvin and his sisters, Casey was pretty sure she’d found her mother’s biological family. A few weeks later Marvin, who grew up in Boston but now lived very close to Barbara in California, tested with 23andMe.
Bingo.
He turned out to be Barbara’s half brother.
The two arranged to finally meet. In photos they look remarkably similar with the same slim build and smiles.
“I’d never seen anyone who looked like me before,” said Barbara, surprised to be able to see family resemblances in her new-found brother and in photos of her sister.
Marvin’s father, Karl, had been a successful business owner in Boston, who had emigrated from Russia. He had a big family – Marvin, who is a year younger than Barbara, was the last of the family’s six children.
Casey still doesn’t know the circumstances of Barbara’s conception, only that she and Marvin have the same biological father, but different mothers. Barbara’s parents lived in Boston at the time she was adopted but later moved to Nashville where she grew up.


“So my mother found out she was adopted at 87 years of age,” Casey said. “It had been this huge family secret only known to her adoptive mother and the secret had died with her, until now. Until 23andMe.”


Even learning this so late in life was hugely important for Barbara. Things she wasn’t sure about in the past suddenly made sense.
“It’s amazing to learn this all at my age,” said Barbara. “I finally found out who I am.”

Who I Am

Selma Spieler wished she knew more about her father.
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<div id="attachment_22922" style="width: 235px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22922" class="size-medium wp-image-22922" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Avram-and-family-225x300.jpg" alt="Selma's father Abraham and her mother Gisha &quot;Gussie&quot; and her sister Aida." width="225" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Avram-and-family-225x300.jpg 225w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Avram-and-family.jpg 480w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 225px) 100vw, 225px" />Selma&#8217;s father Abraham and her mother Gisha &#8220;Gussie&#8221; and her sister Aida.</div>
She knew he came from Russia, was generous – regularly bringing food to neighbors and sending money to a cousin in Israel who was studying to be a doctor. And she knew her father worked hard, toiling at night in a bagel factory in Brooklyn after he immigrated to New York in the 1920s.
But there was a lot she didn’t know about him.
Before she could learn more, her father, Abraham “Avram” Leib Greenberg, died. Selma was 14. It was 1946 and at that moment it sunk in that she’d never be able to ask him about his past, about the seven siblings he left behind in Russia and Poland, or how his family was able to survive pogroms, the violence of World War I and the Russian Revolution.
Selma thought she lost all that family history with her father, a man born in the 1800s, who survived world-shattering changes that swept through Europe before he came to America. She was sure that the history of his life vanished with him. She thought that all the family he left behind was gone too, swept away in the violence that came after her father immigrated. Now in her 80s, she’d long ago given up on finding out anything more about her father and his family.
“My mother just assumed that they had all died in the Holocaust,” her daughter Risa Rubin said.


It’s an experience many Jews with family roots in Eastern Europe can relate to – large parts of their family history erased by the Holocaust and the upheaval of the Second World War.
But more than seventy years after her father died, Selma learned with the help of 23andMe bits about her father’s history that she never knew before. She and her daughter Risa discovered the fate of his siblings. Some were indeed lost in the Holocaust but others survived. And most astounding of all, for Selma and her daughter, is that using 23andMe they were able to find some of her father’s family in Israel and travel to meet them in person including meeting Selma’s first cousin Fania.


“If my mother and I had not done this we would have never known,” Risa said. “She was so emotional, she cried when she found all this out… this has been one of the most amazing experiences of my life.”


This journey of discovery started when Risa and her brother Eric joined 23andMe. Risa was interested in learning more about herself and her ancestry. And then when her mother also used 23andMe, Risa helped her connect with a previously unknown relative named Ayelet, who lives in Israel.
<div id="attachment_22924" style="width: 310px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22924" class="size-medium wp-image-22924" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_3721-300x225.jpg" alt="Risa and her cousin Ayet after meeting for the first time in Israel." width="300" height="225" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_3721-300x225.jpg 300w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_3721-768x576.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_3721-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_3721-880x660.jpg 880w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/IMG_3721-1180x885.jpg 1180w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" />Risa and her cousin Ayelet after meeting for the first time in Israel.</div>
“I noticed that my mom and Ayelet shared DNA, including a segment that was completely identical,” Risa said.


Before that moment, Risa and her brother had assumed that all of her Grandfather’s family had been killed in the Holocaust. But she quickly learned that she had dozens of living relatives on that side of her family, who mostly live in Israel. Ayelet has a brother who had already done an extensive family tree and it proved to be a goldmine for Risa and her mother. Together with the help of Ayelet, Selma’s cousin Fania and another cousin named Naomi, they began filling in the pieces of their missing tree including finding the children and grandchildren of Selma’s uncles, her father’s brothers as well as the children of her aunt. They also learned more about Abraham’s life before he came to America, and that all but four of his siblings had survived the Holocaust, many of them had immigrated to Palestine before the war or wound up in Israel after it.
Ayelet’s great grandfather was Selma’s father’s brother. Ayelet had even known of Selma’s father – his Uncle Abraham – but he’d been told that Abraham had never made it out of
Russia. Selma’s cousin, Fania, however was told that Abraham had made it out and wound up in America, but she knew little else.
Their relatives in Israel were able to offer documents, photos and family history for Selma – information about her father that she never knew.
The documents had information about where he moved in Russia and then Poland, before he immigrated to America. Her cousin Fania recognized the photo of her grandparents that Risa and Selma had brought with them. Selma also learned more about his siblings, Moshe, Haya, Isaac, Slova, Rachel, Yaakov and Shlomo.
The trip allowed Risa and her mother to connect not just with family in Israel, but others in the US and in Russia, a total of more than 50 relatives in all.
“The process of finding our family has been an amazing experience. It was bashert — meant to be,” Risa said.  
“Thank you 23andMe for finding my family.”

Meant to Be

We’re returning one more time to the story of Jessica and Alice, and how they used 23andMe to unravel a <a href="https://www.23andme.org/blog/23andme-customer-stories/jesss-story/">century old mystery</a>.
<div id="attachment_22174" style="width: 236px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22174" class="wp-image-22174 size-medium" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-226x300.jpeg" alt="Jess's grandfather Phil and her great grandfather Sam. " width="226" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-226x300.jpeg 226w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam-662x880.jpeg 662w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Phil-and-Sam.jpeg 665w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 226px) 100vw, 226px" />Jess&#8217;s grandfather Phil and her great grandfather Sam.</div>

We first <a href="https://www.23andme.org/blog/23andme-customer-stories/jesss-story/">wrote about the story</a> back in February 2015 and again <a href="https://www.23andme.org/blog/23andme-customer-stories/the-other-side-of-the-story/">a few weeks later</a>, and we aren’t the only ones fascinated by it.


Scott Fisher, the host of the syndicated family history radio program <a href="http://extremegenes.com/ep-104-23andme-dna-day-and-pursuing-a-jail-break/">Extreme Genes</a>, dedicated his most recent show to their story.
Fisher has <a href="http://extremegenes.com/story-and-photos-of-two-men-switched-at-birth-in-1913-with-their-oops-fathers/">a great interview</a> with Jess, Alice, and genetic genealogist CeCe Moore, who each detail how they worked over three years to piece together a mystery that probably couldn’t have been solved any other way, and it all started when Alice tested with 23andMe.


“I took a DNA test and the results came back all the way wrong,” Alice told Fischer.


Or at least that’s what she thought.
Raised to believe she was three-quarters Irish, Alice’s ancestry results came back showing that she had 50 percent Ashkenazi Jewish ancestry. This sparked what turned into years of trying to figure out if this was all a mistake or something else. Her mother and father weren’t around to ask anymore, so Alice eventually had all seven of her siblings tested with 23andMe.
They all showed the same result. They were half Ashkenazi.
How that was possible was the mystery to Alice, so she began working to solve it. She enlisted the help of CeCe, no stranger of difficult family mysteries, and the two got to work.
“There are unexpected surprises in pretty much every case I work on,” said CeCe.


This one was no different, and CeCe and Alice dove deeper looking at paper records and came up with some theories. If it was just Alice’s results that were different, perhaps the difference could be explained by a single infidelity, but everyone in her family had the same ancestry profile. Obviously something about their family history was different than they suspected. Alice’s father, James, had had a tough upbringing. He knew his parents but had been raised in an orphanage.
Alice began zeroing in on her father and the possibility that   he was switched at birth. But how could you figure something like that out?

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				Alice&#8217;s grandfather, John, who is believed to be Jess&#8217;s great-grandfather.
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				<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" width="150" height="150" src="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/filename-1-150x150.png" class="attachment-thumbnail size-thumbnail" alt="" aria-describedby="gallery-1-23095" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/filename-1-150x150.png 150w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/filename-1-271x271.png 271w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/filename-1-372x372.png 372w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 150px) 100vw, 150px" />
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				Jess&#8217;s Grandfather, Phil.
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				Jess&#8217;s great-grandfather, Sam, who is believed to be Alice&#8217;s grandfather.
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				Alice&#8217;s Father, James.
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He was born at Fordham hospital in the Bronx in 1913, so CeCe and Alice began looking at birth records for babies born on the same day, in the same hospital. Perhaps, they thought, a nurse accidentally put Alice’s father in another child’s crib. CeCe and Alice even went so far as approaching the descendants of a man born that same day with a similar last name and had him test with 23andMe, but they found no match.


And then last year, Jessica, who lives in North Carolina, signed up for 23andMe. Like Alice she also got a big surprise.


“I knew my mom is Japanese, Filipino and Native American,” Jessica said.


Her dad was a bit of a mystery because he’d died when Jessica was still young, but she knew that he was Jewish. But the results came back and instead of showing she had Jewish ancestry, it showed she was a quarter Irish.
“It didn’t match what I knew,” Jessica said.
That might have been it, but that one of Alice’s nephews also tested with 23andMe. Alice found that she shared no DNA with him, that they in fact were not biologically related. Although that would seem to be another dead end, Alice knew that his results could help her solve the mystery.
When he shared with Alice some of his DNA Relative matches, she saw a name she didn’t recognize, Jessica.


“When I saw her listing, I started shaking,” said Alice.
She knew this could be the key.
So Alice sent her a message.
“Help solve a hundred year-old mystery,” Alice said in her message.
Jessica was intrigued.
When they connected, Alice immediately asked whether Jessica had been surprised by her ancestry results.
And then Alice floated her idea, that Jessica’s grandfather and Alice’s father, who were both born on the same day at the same hospital in the Bronx in 1913, had been switched at birth.
For Jessica, the whole thing sounded intriguing. She wanted to know. For Alice, who’d resigned herself to never solving the mystery, she could hardly contain herself.
When they shared family photos, it seemed even clearer that the mystery had been solved.


“You can’t look and come to any other conclusion,” said Fischer in the show.


For CeCe, the photos illustrate something she’s seen in many cases. Here are these two men, clearly not biologically related to the parents who raised them, and for those men how out of place they sometimes must have felt.
It’s also intriguing to think about how their lives might have been different, said Jessica.
“That might be the strangest part,” Jessica said. “They ended up living different lives.”

Family Mystery Solved with 23andMe

A Florida amnesiac has finally figured out his identity with a lot of help from strangers, genetic genealogist CeCe Moore and DNA testing. 
<img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-medium wp-image-22891" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Benjaman_Kyle-199x300.jpg" alt="Benjaman_Kyle" width="199" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Benjaman_Kyle-199x300.jpg 199w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/Benjaman_Kyle.jpg 401w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 199px) 100vw, 199px" />

Benjaman Kyle, who was <a href="http://www.doenetwork.org/cases/1007umga.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">found beaten</a> and semi-conscious behind a south Georgia Burger King 11 years ago, has spent the last several years in Jacksonville Florida, working in a kitchen. His story received national attention with coverage on <a href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=129668438" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">NPR</a> and Dr. Phil to name a few.


“My identity has been found,” Kyle posted on his <a href="https://www.facebook.com/benjaman.kyle.9/posts/10207885434472513" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Facebook page</a>. “It is now the start of the eleventh year since this began and I never thought this day would come. A little over two months ago I was informed by <a href="https://www.facebook.com/cecemoore1" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">CeCe Moore</a> that they had established my Identity using DNA.” 


It was thought that the beating left him with “retrograde amnesia,” so that he could remember more recent event, but the past was largely blank. CeCe spent two years working with a team comparing matches from several DNA testing companies, including 23andMe where he had more than half a dozen close cousin matches and dozens of more distant cousins.

Looking at surnames, geography and the little information that Benjaman had – which included a specific birth date – she was able to find several likely matches, according to a <a href="http://www.news4jax.com/news/man-with-no-name-finally-knows-his-real-identity/35286594" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Florida News station</a> that covered the story this week.
One of the few memories he retained was of Indianapolis. The search connected him with family in Indiana, including several brothers.
Over the summer testing confirmed a family match.
He didn’t reveal his real name yet because:
“I am reserving my new name, for now, until I have met my new found relatives,” he said.

<iframe loading="lazy" width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/m36CvhghVq8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>

DNA Testing Helps Amnesiac

Scott Fisher, the host of the syndicated family history radio show and podcast <a href="http://extremegenes.com/ep-104-23andme-dna-day-and-pursuing-a-jail-break/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">Extreme Genes</a>, talked earlier this month with 23andMe’s Senior Director of <img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignright size-full wp-image-21027" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/@PITER-23andMe-JoannaMountain-43.jpg" alt="@PITER-23andMe-JoannaMountain-43" width="200" height="285" />Research Joanna Mountain.


For this episode, Fischer and Joanna spoke again about ancestry features focusing in on some of the more common questions from customers. Fischer previously spoke with 23andMe population geneticist Kasia Byrc, PhD, about some of the science behind DNA testing, and he will continue to feature an expert from 23andMe on his show each month to delve into the ins and out of DNA testing for ancestry purposes.
Talking to Joanna, Fisher learned that many customers from the United States have family stories about Native American ancestry and they often test with 23andMe to explore that side of their family history.
“Sometimes they find it in the DNA, but sometimes it’s not there,” Joanna said during the show.


That doesn’t always mean that those family stories are wrong, but that the Native American ancestry has been lost over the generations, Joanna said. The DNA evidence might not be there anymore but there may still be cultural evidence of that ancestry.
Fischer also asked about adoptees and what typically motivates them to test.


“Actually they have a lot of the same questions (as other customers),” Joanna said.
But for adoptees, testing is often the only option to find out some very basic information, like their ancestry, said Joanna, who oversees research projects and the development of ancestry product offerings at 23andMe.
The show also featured David Allen Lambert, Chief Genealogist of the New England Historic Genealogical Society and American Ancestors, Sarah O’Connor of <a href="http://www.geneartistry.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">GeneArtistry</a>.com, and Tom Perry from <a href="http://www.tmcplace.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">TMCPlace.com</a>.


Check out the podcast <a href="http://extremegenes.com/ep-104-23andme-dna-day-and-pursuing-a-jail-break/" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">here</a>.

Another Extreme Genes Podcast

Scientists have unearthed a trove of bones in a South African cave belonging to a previously unidentified early human relative.
<div id="attachment_22837" style="width: 277px" class="wp-caption alignright"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-22837" class="size-medium wp-image-22837" src="https://www.23andme.org/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/F1.large-1-267x300.jpg" alt="Composite skeleton of Homo nadeli along with other bones found at the Rising Star Cave in South Africa. Photo: Lee Berger, Wits, photographed at Evolutionary Studies Institute" width="267" height="300" srcset="https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/F1.large-1-267x300.jpg 267w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/F1.large-1-768x863.jpg 768w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/F1.large-1-911x1024.jpg 911w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/F1.large-1-783x880.jpg 783w, https://blogcms.23andme.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/F1.large-1-1050x1180.jpg 1050w" sizes="auto, (max-width: 267px) 100vw, 267px" />Composite skeleton of Homo nadeli along with other bones found at the Rising Star Cave in South Africa. Photo: Lee Berger, Wits, photographed at Evolutionary Studies Institute</div>
<h2>Rising Star</h2>
Found in the “Rising Star Cave,” the new species has been dubbed homo naledi – naledi is the Sosetho word for star – and fills in more detail about the story of human evolution.
“We’ve found a new species that we are placing in the genus Homo, which is really quite remarkable,” <a href="https://twitter.com/LeeRberger">Lee Berger</a>, a paleoanthropologist, who led the research told the <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/sep/10/new-species-of-ancient-human-discovered-claim-scientists">Guardian</a>.
There’s much to ponder with the new finding and some intriguing implications discussed at length in two <a href="http://elifesciences.org/content/4/e09560">new papers</a> about the bones as well as a new <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/dawn-of-humanity.html">Nova</a> special. For one, the find adds more information in the big gap in the fossil record tracing back to the dawn of humanity. 
<h2>Homo Naledi</h2>
One of the papers also details where and how the bones were found and covers various theories about how they got there. The implication from that paper is that the bones – more than a 1,000 bones and bone fragments from at least 15 individuals – were possibly brought there for burial. If true this would suggest that homo naledi were advanced enough to actually have a ritual for burying their dead.
“If true it points to advance behavior,” <a href="http://bluelionphotos.blogspot.co.za/2015/09/the-rising-star-interviews.html">said John Hawkes</a>, and paleoanthropologist from the University of Wisconsin who is a co-author of the paper.
That would also point to such things as social bonds, and other kinds of communal structures.
The excavation and its implications are covered at length in the upcoming issue of <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/09/150910-human-evolution-change/">National Geographic</a>.
<h2>Ancient Human Relative</h2>
The team believes the bones &#8211; as yet undated &#8211; represent a new ancient human relative that adds another chapter in the human story.
The bones have some characteristics that are similar to both modern humans and other ancient human species that pre-date it. They were long-legged and slender with hands and feet similar to humans, but their brains were only about a third of the size of modern humans.
In the wonderful <a href="https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/evolution/dawn-of-humanity.html">Nova</a> program, scientists say the find should more clearly change how we look at the human family tree, where there were likely many different species that branched out in different ways, some crossing back to contribute to what ultimately became modern humans, while others went extinct.

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