Adopted woman meets birth mother at Skiff
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A lot of laughs and almost as many tears marked a very special reunion at Skiff Medical Center last Saturday.
Early in the morning on Sept. 23, 1970, a 15-year-old girl from Colfax gave birth at Skiff Medical Center, in the former obstetrics unit that is now home to the Monarch Wing. Until that night, Debra Gregg Wiegand hadn’t even known she was pregnant. And because she was unconscious during the delivery, she knew nothing of her child, who was promptly handed over for adoption.
“She never saw the baby,” said Cindy Ahn, a Skiff employee and childhood friend of Wiegand’s. “She didn’t even know if it was a boy or a girl.”
Fast forward several decades: Ahn and Wiegand, who had lost touch over the years, reconnected on Facebook. As they communicated with one another, the subject of that long-lost baby arose.
“She said she always wondered,” Ahn said. “I said, ‘Let’s start looking.’”
Ahn helped her friend with extensive research online and eventually unearthed the information needed to connect Wiegand with her child: a daughter, Lisa Marie Pelletier.
Wiegand sent a letter to Pelletier which, interestingly enough, arrived in time for the separated mother and daughter to first communicate on May 4: Cindy Ahn’s birthday.
The pair, who “couldn’t wait” to meet, according to Wiegand, first saw each other face to face two weeks later, when Pelletier traveled from Massachusetts to Arizona. This trip was soon followed by another, this time to Skiff, so that they could visit the location where Wiegand had given birth.
The gathering also included Terry Yoakum, Sr., Pelletier’s biological father, himself only a teenager when she was born.
When he first heard from his childhood sweetheart that their child had been found, “I thought it was a joke,” Yoakum said. “I thought someone was pranking me.”
Meeting her parents after a lifetime apart, Pelletier said she immediately recognized herself in them. Gesturing to her mom, she said, “I’m definitely her baby.”
“I knew it the minute I saw her,” Wiegand said. “She has my nose, eyes and laugh. She has her dad’s smile and dimples.”
Pelletier’s adopted family, which included a brother, was a military one, so she grew up in places such as France, Germany and Egypt. Upon the loss of her adopted mother in 1990 — followed not too many years by her adopted father’s death — she began the search for her biological parents.
“If nothing else, I wanted to tell them both thank you,” Pelletier said. “At their ages, so young, they did the right thing in letting me be adopted.”
Unbeknownst to Pelletier, her real mother was feeling similar pangs.
“I needed to find her,” Wiegand said. “I had a void that needed to be filled.”
That void no longer exists, as the mother and daughter now communicate with each other daily and are even considering making arrangements to live in the same state.
“I feel complete for the first time in my life,” said Pelletier, who kept hugging her mom, as though she couldn’t quite believe she was really there.
In addition to their physical similarities, the women share a sense of humor.
“We should do the Oprah show!” Wiegand declared of their happy reunion.
“And maybe we’ll get some free gifts!” Pelletier chimed in.
In addition to touring the place of Pelletier’s birth, the family was able to witness as CEO Steve Long presented Pelletier with a commemorative birth certificate, which included her weight and length as a baby, as well as the name of her delivering physician, Dr. Marvin Moles. After Pelletier applied her thumbprints to the document, both she and Wiegand were in tears.
“This is just an amazing story,” Long said as he doled out tissues to mother and daughter.
Ahn, close at hand, agreed. “This whole thing did my heart good.”
