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Adopted woman meets birth family for first time in South Florida

This was a reunion years in the making.

Melissa Hall has spent decades looking for her biological family on her Dad’s side. This weekend, she got to meet them for the first time.

Hall has always known that her parents, who were college students in California back in the 60s, put her up for adoption right after she was born.

“Because she was Hispanic — white hispanic — she couldn’t really have a brown baby,” Hall said.

Hall said her adoptive parents were always loving, but she couldn’t help feeling a connection was missing.

So she started her search using ancestry.com’s DNA testing, and when she got her results back, it led her to Deboral Hallmon and Synita Seymour, her cousins, who had also taken the DNA test.

“Family was so important and I just knew it was always a lot of missing puzzles, and I just wanted to find them,” Seymour said.

Hall sent them both messages through the website. Deboral answered first.

“I just responded and she responded back and so it started from there,” she said.

Hall said Hallmon started telling her about her biological father.

“I was like, ‘This is matching up,’” Hall said. “This is real.”

After two years of calls and texts back and forth, Hall decided it was time to go meet her family and flew down to South Florida for Christmas.

When she got there, the connection was instant.

“It was like ‘oh my goodness this is like really happening,’” she said. “I really see that there are people that share my blood out there.”

There were a lot of hugs and happy tears. Hall got to see pictures of her grandfather Daniel and her late father Johnny.

“I feel sad that he’s not here to share this moment with us,” Hall said. “I know that he’s looking down saying, ‘I’m glad you met my family.’”


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