DNA Dilemmas: Family secrets revealed by test kits

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (KRDO) -- Kits like Ancestry DNA and 23 and Me are growing in popularity. We've heard stories of people finding long-lost relatives and then the emotional reunions that follow.

But there are stories that involve deep secrets and families torn apart, families like Hope LaMonica's.

"I was daddy's little girl," said Hope. "He was my best friend, we would talk to each other three to four times a week."

Growing up as the child of an Army veteran, she rarely got the chance to see him as often as she wished.

"He was gone a lot so I didn't get to spend as much time with him until I was an adult."

He was married to her mom for 43 years until she passed away in 2005. The rest, you would think, would be history; but it all changed.

"I ordered an ancestry DNA test and part of the reason was I went to Africa in 2009 and I asked what tribe did it look like I had features from and they said Congo and so I always wanted to know if that was really true," she said.

A DNA kit connected the dots, leading her back to ancestry roots and her family tree.

"I had looked at my ethnicity and then I saw the tab that said matches, and I clicked on matches. There were 800 names that popped up. The first one that popped up said this person matched me 3,800 centimorgans, and they were either my parent my child or my twin," Hope said.

Right away, Hope could rule out that the person was her child, but what she couldn't do was ask her mom about the rest. So she reached out to the mystery man behind her computer screen listed as her father, trying to give him basic information that might somehow lead to answers.

"I messaged him and said my mom's name was Lillian and my dad's name was Wheeler and I was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He messaged me back and said, 'I know what this means, I don't want to cause you any pain, do you have a phone number so I can call you?'" Hope said.

She didn't know the phone call with someone she thought was a stranger would turn her world upside down.

"The phone rang and he said, 'Hi this is Melvin, there is no easy way for me to tell you this but I'm your biological father'. If I could say the floor dropped out from beneath me and tears came down, I still remember standing there and falling to the floor even though I kind of knew what he was going to say, just hearing him say those words," Hope said.

She'd later come to realize, Melvin knew more about her than she realized.

"He didn't want to come in with a family that was established and mess that up, and so he had the hope of one day when he did his DNA test that maybe I would do a DNA test and that he would find me," she said.

It was a secret Hope's mom took with her to her grave.

"Everything that I had believed growing up was no longer true. The man that I loved, that I worshiped, that was my daddy, was no longer per se 'my dad,'" Hope said.

But if she grew up thinking her dad was her biological father, what did he live his life thinking?

After working up the courage to ask him, he got her answer.

"He always knew and she knew and he had asked her to tell me the truth and she never did," Hope said.

She learned she was born following an affair between her mother and a man named Melvin Stephens, while the man she called dad was serving a yearlong army deployment in Korea.

"He told me that nothing was going to change, that he was always going to love me but I was not his biological child," Hope said.

Did Hope ever regret taking the DNA test?

"I've gone through stages where I was even angry with my daddy because he knew and he didn't tell me. Everyone kept that secret," Hope said.

But what Hope didn't know at the time is that her answer would change, because the story didn't end there.

A few months later, her father became sick and told Hope he had one last wish and it was about her biological father.

"He goes, 'I want you to have a relationship with him, I want you to meet him. You have the right to do that and he needs to know who you are,'" she said.

So Hope and Melvin planned a visit.

"This picture is the first time my daughters met their new biological grandfather, we surprised him and flew to Atlanta," Hope said.

One she says she remembers vividly.

"Him knocking on the door and just looking at this person who you finally see someone that looks like you and has your eyes and has your smile. All the things as a child, you want to see. That you look like your parents," she said.

Finally a sense of completeness she says has changed her life, and three years after finding each other, they still try to get caught up on the decades lost.

"Our relationship is wonderful We probably talk a few times a week on the phone, we text and communicate quite a bit," Hope said.

With a discovery so deep, they're united in the most curious situation.

"Blood doesn't make you family, love makes you family," Hope said.

For the past several years, Hope has found comfort in a Facebook group called DNA NPE Gateway. With so many people sharing the same kind of experiences and results as Hope, the group now has upwards of 7000 members.

Their mission is to help people through trauma caused by unexpected results.