For 67 years, Monette Marchman wondered where she came from. Her answer arrived in the form of four sisters she never knew she had! Here, she shares her story.

Sissy Caballero Ponce was curled on the couch watching TV when her 88-year-old mom, Doris, shuffled in from her bedroom and sat beside her. “You have to find your sister,” Doris suddenly blurted.

“It’s OK, I know where my sisters are — all three of them,” she told her mom, who had Alzheimer’s.

“No!” Doris protested. “Your other sister. The one I gave up for adoption!”

Before Sissy could respond, Doris hurried back to her room. Sissy followed, heart pounding. “What do you mean?” she said, but Doris had retreated into her fog.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Doris said when Sissy tried to learn more.

Later, Sissy conference called her sisters, Jana, Tam and Lena. “I found Mom’s journals from before I was born. Sure enough, she mentions giving up a baby girl.”

“We have another sister?” Lena gasped.

“We have to find her,” Tam said. The others agreed.

Sissy dug deeper into the journals. Jana, who took their mom out weekly, gently asked questions when Doris was lucid.

Slowly, the puzzle pieces began to fit together.

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Searching for answers

In 1957, Doris lived in a mobile home next door to a kind couple named Jim and Carrie.

When Doris became pregnant, she confided in the couple, “I don’t know what to do. I can’t keep this baby.”

“We’ve been trying to adopt,” Carrie told her. “We’d love to raise your child.”

When Jim transferred from the Navy to the Air Force, the couple moved to Louisiana, and Doris came with them. She had the baby girl, named her Carolyn Monette, then returned to San Diego, heartbroken to leave behind the daughter whose sweet memory would haunt her for the rest of her life.

Monette Marchman grew up knowing she was adopted, but whenever she asked about her birth parents, her mom and dad had always changed the subject.

When Monette turned 17, her grandmother took her aside. “I have something to show you,” she said, and produced a faded photograph of Monette’s birth mother.

Monette stared, awestruck. “I look just like her,” she said, fighting back tears. But she got only a glimpse before her grandmother tucked the photo away, and sadly, Monette never saw it again.

Back then, there were few resources to help track down birth parents. And Monette didn’t know her birth mom’s name, where she was from or if she was even still alive. Where is she? Why did she give me up? she wondered, but her questions went unanswered
for almost 70 years.

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They were both amazed at how alike they are after all this time.

Newfound family

Curious about their Filipino heritage, three of the sisters had taken DNA tests, but there were no relative matches. But when their mom passed, Tam tried the DNA test again — and this time there was a family match.

“Could it be?” The sisters grasped at the thread of hope. They sent a message on the ancestry site, but there was no reply. But then Sissy’s daughter, Tina, had an idea. She copied the mysterious stranger’s username into an email message and added @gmail.com to see if that might be her email address. We may be related, she wrote in the message, and told her aunts, “It’s a longshot, but sometimes longshots pay off.”

Monette’s daughter, Shannon, had also been interested in her family heritage. She’d sent in her own DNA test last January, and she was stunned when she received Tina’s email. “Mom, I think I found your birth family!” she exclaimed to Monette.

“She looks just like Mom!” the sisters gasped when they saw Monette’s photo, and soon, they were on a call with their long-lost sister. “I can’t believe this is really happening!” Monette wept tears of joy. “I always dreamed I had a sister, but I never imagined…four!”

“As soon as we learned about you, we knew we had to find you,” Jana said.

“We needed another sister,” added Sissy with a laugh.

Monette and her newfound family talked for hours, and before ending the call the San Diego sisters had planned a trip to visit Monette’s home in Mississippi.

Six months later, the sisters still talk every day, catching up on a lifetime of memories. “We instantly took Monette into our hearts,” Sissy says.

“It took 67 years, but I finally have answers to all my questions—and four wonderful sisters to boot,” says Monette. “I couldn’t feel more blessed!”