SANTA ANA : Phone Call Brings His Past Full Circle

When Bryan Charles Thatcher, 45, answered his phone Wednesday night, he said hello for the first time to two sisters he never knew he had.

“I’m still in shock,” Thatcher said Thursday. “They gave me some information and said, ‘I’m your sister,’ and I said, “Really? I can hardly believe this.’ ”

Thatcher, who was adopted by a family in Oakland shortly after he was born, had known all his life that he might have biological brothers and sisters somewhere. Although he had made a few attempts to find them, he had not succeeded and decided that a concerted effort would have to wait.

His sisters, however, have been searching for him ever since 1975, when they learned about him shortly before their mother died.

At 11 p.m. Wednesday, the relentless, 17-year search of his younger sisters came to an end. Through a combination of luck and persistence, Dottie Shyduik, 43, of Vancouver, Wash., and Judy Deets, 40, of Portland, Ore., found their brother.

On Thursday, Deets said in a telephone interview: “I think I’m still in shock. It’s hard to believe. . . . I’m happy I’ve got a big brother and I’m a baby sister.”

Calling from Shyduik’s home, the sisters talked with Thatcher until 1 a.m. about their lives and families. Thatcher discovered that he shares a love of tinkering with racing cars with his biological father, who died in 1962. The two men also both got into the construction business after duty in the armed forces.

From her Vancouver home, Shyduik said making the phone call was as difficult as parts of the search had been. “We were a nervous wreck,” she said. “We had to write on a piece of paper to know what we were going to say. We thought that he would think we were crazy, but it turns out he knew he was adopted.”

Shyduik was the driving force in tracking down her brother. She kept a three-inch-thick file. After a private investigator failed to turn up any clues 14 years ago, she continued looking on her own.

She eventually stumbled onto a name and description on a birth certificate in an Alameda County courthouse that matched her brother’s. With the help of a support group for adopted children in Sacramento, she found her brother’s phone number this week.

“It feels great,” Shyduik said. “It’s really kind of unbelievable after all these years to have found him. There were a lot of dead ends.”

Thatcher called his adoptive father, who lives in West Covina, to tell him the news shortly after hanging up with his newfound sisters. Thatcher’s adoptive family also includes a younger sister. Their mother died several years ago.

Thatcher said he would have begun an intensified search for blood relatives eventually but added that he is glad that is no longer necessary.

“The curiosity kept kind of bothering me as years went on,” he said. “I’m astonished at the magnitude they went to to find me, but I’m grateful. These kind of things don’t happen too often.

“I just wish my natural mom and dad were still alive so I could meet them.”

He said he immediately wants to meet his sisters and told them to come to visit, saying: “The door’s open. Automatically, the door’s open.”

He added: “I might go up there next week. I might sneak up to Vancouver to say hi, you know, because of the curiosity. It will probably be an emotional reuniting. I’m sure we’ll shed a few tears, pass on stories, look at pictures.”