Brother & sister adopted separately as babies into the same Staten Island family learn they're actually biological siblings
NEW YORK -- Two adopted siblings who were abandoned as babies on Staten Island and adopted into the same family in the early 2000s just looked into their ancestry, and what they found out left them floored.
Claudia, a cardiology technician, recalls the moment she first laid eyes on Vicky at Richmond University Medical Center in 2004.
"I opened the stall, and I saw this little precious thing tucked under the toilet tank and wrapped in a blanket," she said.
Vicky was just days old then.
"I just scooped her up and ran to the clinic," Claudia said.
With Claudia by her side, 19-year-old Vicky visited the spot her birth mother left her for the very first time Tuesday. What was a bathroom at the time is now an electrical closet.
"Now knowing the story, it definitely is a lot but in a good way," she said.
Vicky always knew she was adopted but not how her journey began.
"For my whole life, I kind of just knew Claudia as my mom's close friend," she said.
Just over a month ago, she learned Claudia actually found her and cared for her until her family took her home.
"Claudia has been an angel from day one," said Vicky's mother, Angela.
Angela and Dennis adopted Vicky, making their family of four a family of five. They had two boys -- a biological son, Nicholas, and an adopted son, Frank, who was found in a diaper bag on the steps of Bellamy's Christian Day Care. CBS New York covered his story in 2002.
Twenty-year-old Frank, too, recently learned his full story and became curious about his biology. Angela stepped in with kits from Ancestry.com.
She says she told Frank and Vicky, "Maybe you have some relatives in common. You're both from Staten Island."
Frank submitted his first, Vicky not long after.
"I got the match that my brother had popped up as my full sibling, my biological brother," Vicky said.
"I was driving home, actually, and she called me and she was telling me, like, 'Oh my god, we're biologically related,' and I was like, 'Yeah, OK, whatever.' Little did I know I've been living with my blood my whole life. It's insane," Frank said.
"For years, people would ask us, are they related? And we'd say no because we didn't know they were," Dennis said.
"How did I miss this? Because I wasn't supposed to miss it. They're my children," Angela said.
"We were both found a year and half apart and wound up with the same family. The odds are insane," Frank said.
And their story - beautiful.
