I Broke Into an Adoption Agency to Find My Name

In this episode of Finding Family DNA, we sit down with an author and adoptee who turned a decades-long search for her birth family into three deeply personal books. Adopted in Denver in the early 1960s, she spent years chasing fragments of her past before taking a daring, real-life risk to uncover her birth mother's identity. What followed was a reunion that didn't unfold the way she'd imagined, a startling twist involving the man she thought was her birth father, and a DNA confirmation that didn't arrive until decades later. Along the way, she discovered how trauma can freeze a birth parent in time, and how healing often means letting your story become your strength instead of your wound. Her journey took her from a broken lock and a library microfiche machine to a small-town diner phone call that changed everything. Now she's using her voice to help other adoptees find their own truth — and their own community.

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https://youtu.be/1uaZ6wvlo0o

00:00 Intro

00:45 Case Update: A Birth Father Reconnects After Decades

01:35 Meet Linda Pevac, Author of Three Adoption Memoirs

02:45 Growing Up Knowing She Was Adopted

04:00 Deciding to Search for Her Birth Mother

04:45 Starting the Search in Secret, 1987

06:00 Non-Identifying Information from the Agency

07:00 Planning to Break Into the Adoption Agency