DNA genealogy companies help adoptees find their roots

The social worker said no. The judge said no. The local phone books were useless.

For decades, no one and nothing could help Sue Warthen find the people who gave birth to her in the mid-1960s.

Then her adoptive mother encouraged Mrs. Warthens new husband, Rob, a computer whiz, to see what he could do.

He built a computer program that permitted him to build out family trees, and he asked his wife to swab her cheek and send her DNA to a genealogy company.

Mr. Warthen put her results into his program, worked with a search angel named Karin Corbeil, and found a trail that led to Mrs. Warthens birth mother.

Additional investigative work may now have led to her birth father too.

Ive always wanted to know where I actually came from that I wasnt simply dropped off, said Mrs. Warthen, who was adopted in Maryland when she was a few months old and has been looking for her birth family since the early 1980s, when she turned 18.

Today, hundreds, if not thousands, of adoptees have used DNA genealogy companies like Family Tree DNA, 23andMe and Ancestry.com to jump over bureaucratic barriers and find members of their genetic families.

People sometimes say we cant do it unless theres close DNA matches, but thats not true we can do it with distant ones too, said CeCe Moore, a professional genetic genealogist who has appeared on Finding Your Roots with Henry L. Gates Jr. on PBS.

Even foundlings can find their birth relatives, Ms. Moore said.

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DNA genealogy companies help adoptees find their roots