Abandoned As Babies, DNA Test Helps Connect Likely Siblings Years Later

HESPERIA (CBSLA.com) — Janet Barnicoat will meet her likely sibling Saturday for the first time in part due to a DNA test that revealed the pair was related.

Barnicoat, a Hesperia resident, was abandoned in a Lawndale alleyway in 1981.

She was adopted by Dave and Virginia Barnicoat, who showed her newspaper clippings of the bicyclist, JoAnn Hauser, who discovered her.

Hauser, seen in an old clipping, visited Barnicoat at the hospital as a baby.

Last year, Barnicoat met Hauser but that wasn't enough.

She eventually registered with an ancestry website and took a DNA test, which found a likely sibling, Dean Hundorf.

"We look exactly alike in so many ways," Barnicoat said.

Hundorf, who lives in Wisconsin, says he was abandoned as a baby in 1986.

According to Hundorf, he was left on a porch in Pacific Palisades and was picked up by two Los Angeles County sheriff's deputies.

"Just looking at pictures of us, we're like a spitting image of each other. The second I see her, everything is going to become real to me," Hundorf said.

And now, Hundorf plans to travel to Barnicoat, whom he will meet for the first time Saturday.

"I'm complete now. Like I know there's somebody like me who has my blood in them so I'm happy," Barnicoat said.