Best Friends Discover They're Also Sisters

(CBS)  Many people have the experience of meeting someone who became a close friend - so close, they feel like family. But what if you found out that person actually was in your family? What if that person turned out to be a long-lost sibling? How would that make you feel?

Brandy Hersh and Heidi Wickware met when they were growing up in Springfield, Missouri. Brandy was adopted shortly after she was born by Debbie Vasio and her husband. Heidi was born two years later to Lisa Russell and her husband. Lisa, however, had put her firstborn daughter up for adoption because she was a single mother.

Though they went to the same schools growing up, it wasn't until Heidi, 25, and Brandy, 27, were in their twenties that they became friendly. "We just met through friends and we were just group dating with boyfriends and met. We've been together ever since," said Heidi.

The two became fast friends, Brandy recalled. "When we first met, it was an automatic connection. I had told her that we were -- that I thought of her as such a good friend, like a better friend than some of the friends that I'd had for years and years and years. And we just clicked. We liked the same things. We liked to do the same things. I mean, now that I look at it, it was like we'd almost finish each other's words at that time."

After the two had been friends for a while, explained Vasio (Brandy's adoptive mother), "Brandy met Lisa (Heidi's biological mother), some details came together. Lisa said [she] gave up a baby for adoption, and [asked Lisa] what is the day you were born and somehow we all put the pieces together."

But it took a while, Vasio noted. "In a closed adoption, there's not much information. Really it's just like I would have physically have to had Brandy, so we didn't have a lot of information. However, I knew some details about the birth mother, [so] the questions that I had Brandy ask her revealed [what] I was sure of in my mind."

Brandy tried to open her adoption records, but got impatient when, after 18 months, no progress was made cutting through the red tape. "I finally decided it's been too long, we've been talking about it too long, so we went and got a DNA test from a [reliable] place . . . and Monday we got the DNA test back and it was 100%." That's because Lisa eventually married Brandy's biological father and they had Heidi together.

Brandy said, "My reaction, I never had thought in a million years that we would be 100%.
It did cross my mind that we would be half sisters as far as our hair color and eye color. I thought there's no way that -- you know, it never even crossed my mind."

Brandy said she's always known she was adopted: "I never remember my mom coming to me and telling me. I also have a sister we adopted when I was 6, and I don't know if I struck right then, but I don't remember her ever coming to me and telling me. I just knew it." But Heidi never knew that her mother had given up an older sister for adoption. When she heard the DNA results, Heidi said, she was "floored, just amazed. There's no word for it."

[palady19]

This is a wonderful story! Thank you! Heart-warming. On the downside, though, there are millions of adoptees who will never be able to learn their genetic and cultural heritage, family and medical history, as long as most states in this country continue to deprive them of the equitable right of access to their own birth records, something that is available to every U.S. citizen who is not adopted. Please, everyone, write to legislators, federal and state, and demand that this basic right afforded to everyone else be restored to adoptees. Don''t let fringe groups such as the NCFA side-track you on the red-herring issue of "privacy" for birthmothers. There''s no such thing that was ever promised to any woman. I, for one, longed for the day when my daughter would want to know me. My dream came true, and now my daughters, like Brandy and Heidi, are best friends/sisters forever.
P. Sharp
Birthmother ''64 AZ, reunited ''86

[godofredo29]

I blame myself.

[Yooperjo--2008]

First, what a beautiful story! What a gift at this gift-giving time of year!

However, this is just one more example of why adult adoptees need to be given access to identifying information about themselves. If close girl friends can actually be full siblings, there is nothing to prevent a sister and brother from becoming intimately involved or even marrying. It has, indeed, happened, as genetic similarities draw them together in shared-interest activities and occupations.

Every state has laws forbidding marriage to a sibling, parent, cousin, or other relatives. However, for the adoptee, who is told it''s none of his/her business who his siblings, parents, or cousins are, he/she must play a cruel game of Russian roulette in finding a mate.

Incest laws, which date back to biblical times, were enacted to protect citizens and their progeny from producing children and grandchildren with duplicated weaknesses in their genetics. How can we justify putting one entire segment of our population at risk by shutting them off from all knowledge of their families of birth? Indefensibly horrendous.