Family Secrets: Long Lost Daughter

Searching for the truth can sometimes take you where you never expected - and leave you where you've never imagined.

Correspondent Susan Spencer reports on a woman haunted by her past, and by a mystery that began the moment she was born. This story was first broadcast last December.

Police received an anonymous phone call that night and raced to the park. They found the baby exactly where the caller said they would.

The baby appeared to be just a few days old. It looked like a home birth - the umbilical cord was tied off with thread.

The baby, Liz Bagwell, was later adopted. But her childhood was rough. She was often left alone, or with her adoptive brother, who teased her about being abandoned.

"My memory of him saying, 'I didn't want you, nobody wanted you.' Those things shined through a lot," says Liz.

After her adoptive mother died in 1996, Liz began the search for her birth mother. "I think there's somebody that loved me, and I just would like to know," she says.

For almost six years, every lead led to a dead end. But then, two years ago, Liz registered on a Web site, Bighugs.com, which has reunited thousands of children with their biological parents.

There's a charge if Bighugs investigators take a case. But anyone can post a name for free, which is what Liz did.

To her shock, just six months later, a 48-year-old woman in Illinois left a message on the site: "Love that has not been lacking for even a moment. Searching for a daughter that was taken from me. Wonder if she desires contact or medical info?"

A call to the woman, Sher Altenoff, confirmed details about Liz's abandonment. Bighugs then contacted Liz with a message from her mother.

"She loves you, and that she always loved you, from day one, she has always loved you," said Arliene Dunn of Bighugs. "I think you have a family of people waiting to express that love to you."

Liz was overwhelmed. She discovered she had three half-sisters, including twin sisters.

"I want to meet her [my mother]. I want to talk to her," says Liz. "I want to hug my sisters. I have people that probably look like me."

Sher apologizes for abandoning Liz. "That's OK. You don't have to be sorry; I forgave you a long time ago. I have so many questions for you – I'm probably going to question you to death," says Liz, who found out details about her birth and why Sher abandoned her.

Sher told her that her decision to abandon Liz, whom she called Angela, was made at the last minute: "At the last minute, actually, I had changed my mind, and wanted you there, but I just couldn't do anything about it at the last moment."

Liz also says she was thrilled when she found out that Sher was of Italian ancestry: "Oh my gosh, I look Italian, I talk Italian! I throw my hands around when I talk."

Sher discovered that she had five grandchildren – two of Liz's own children, and three step-grandchildren. Liz's husband had chldren from a previous marriage.

At the end of the call, they make plans to meet the following week.

"This will be a good night's sleep tonight," says Sher, before hanging up the phone. "I think it'll be the first one in a while."

This joyous call far exceeded anyone's expectations. "I have grandchildren," says Sher after getting off the phone. "I have a daughter that sure doesn't sound like there is one bit of hatred or anything in her."

"I never stopped thinking about her," says a nervous Sher before meeting her long lost daughter. Married three times, she's now a stay-at-home mom outside Chicago. She says she had always hoped to find her first child, but never thought it would actually happen.

Sher's other daughters, twins Jennifer and Melissa and ten-year-old Morgan, followed their mother to Liz's home in Tennessee for their first visit.

When Sher and her daughters landed in Knoxville, everyone hugged, and posed for their first family picture.

Sher says she could hardly take her eyes off Liz: "All I keep thinking is that these are the eyes, and this is the face that I looked at and had to let go. And I promised you, I would see you again and told you to be good, and it happened. And I did get to see you again. And I love you, darling."

After their first family picnic ever, Sher and Liz talk privately about that fateful night. Sher says she and Liz's father married primarily so they could move and hide the pregnancy, which they successfully did. But she still avoided giving details about exactly what happened right after Liz was born - why wasn't the baby simply given up for adoption?

"I get the message that she's sorry and that she didn't mean for anything hateful to happen, which from the beginning, I've never had any angry bone in my body about what happened," says Liz, who hopes that with time, Sher will tell her more.

Liz discovers that her parents split up two years after she was born, and that her father has been married three times, and has two other children that she has not met.

After some hesitation, he agreed to meet her privately in Chicago.

"It wasn't like hugging and excitement and happiness. It was really silent. But I kept trying to ask questions," says Liz. "And he would answer them briefly and it would be over."

However, plans are under way for her father to meet his grandchildren in Tennessee.

Liz and her mother also had a longer second visit. But just as it looked like the relationship would grow, her mother pulled back.

"She kind of wanted to just hold off a little bit – back off and take things a little bit slower," says Liz. "Since then, I haven't heard anything from her, by phone or e-mail or anything. Not a word."

This doesn't surprise Arliene Dunn at Bighugs, who says that after the initial euphoria, reunited parents and children often have to figure out what they want from the relationship.

"The challenge becomes do you have one person who wants more out of this relationship than the other one? We try to prepare them for that," says Dunn.

Liz is disappointed, but she says she has no regrets: "It does make me feel sad that after 30 years, people can't just admit that they did something wrong and just come out and say why they did it."

One relationship, however, has changed a lot since we last aired this story. Liz and her husband got a divorce, something she says had been brewing for a while. But she insists it had nothing to do with her efforts to reconnect with her mom. That's something she continues to struggle with to this day.