Searching for Roots : Groups help a growing number of adoptees discover their biological parents. The quest is often fraught with apprehension and excitement.

Armed with little more than her birth date and birthplace--Oct. 15, 1965, Van Nuys--Jacqui Ochoa has set out to find her mother.

Furious at laws that prevent adoptees from accessing sealed adoption records, Ochoa has joined the Sunland-based chapter of the Adoptees Liberty Movement Assn. to seek support and guidance for her search.

“I didn’t realize you could tap into a network of people who are adept at searching until I found ALMA,” said Ochoa, 27, who lives in Huntington Beach and was reared in La Palma in Orange County. “So far I’ve learned that birth mothers usually stay in the area where you were born. And I’ve also tracked down a staff person who worked at a Van Nuys church that my mother belonged to.”

The search for one’s biological parents is fraught with apprehension, excitement and anticipation. ALMA, founded in 1971 and which has 70 chapters nationwide, is one of several area search and support groups for increasing numbers of adoptees who yearn to discover their roots.

Those pondering a search should be aware of what lies ahead, says ALMA’s area coordinator, Pamela Starck, who found her birth mother nine years ago in San Diego. “We search to find the truth--for answers to who we look like, medical and social backgrounds and the basic story of our birth.

“Undertaking a search is in itself a very healing process. It gives back control of the knowledge of how you started out in this life. And it puts you in touch with lots of anger at being denied a search by sealed adoption records.” Most states, including California, have sealed records, opened only for medical or inheritance reasons.

ALMA and other area search organizations offer the following points for those considering a search:

* Searching for biological parents does not indicate rejection of an adoptive family. “In fact, the adoptee who feels secure and wanted in his family may search for the truth, knowing that he will lose nothing in the process and may gain a great deal,” reads ALMA literature. The question of whether to search raises loyalty issues immediately, but support groups stress that knowledge of one’s roots is a right that all adults deserve. Such knowledge doesn’t negate the decades of child rearing that adoptive families provided.

* The percentage of birth mothers who are glad to be found is high, according to search organizations. “Relinquishing a child is one of the hardest things a birth mother has had to do,” says Gayle Beckstead, who runs the Independent Search Consultants support group in Sherman Oaks. “The overwhelming majority are overjoyed to discover what that child looks like now--who they’ve become.”

* Don’t expect to find your fantasy family. Although you may have high hopes of finding a set of perfect parents, chances are they don’t exist. “We tell people that you don’t have to like who you find and they don’t have to like you,” Starck says. “You don’t owe anyone an ongoing relationship. That’s just frosting on the cake. Each new relationship with a birth mother tends to seek its own level--from weekly to monthly or just annual contact.”

* Consider carefully what you will say during initial contact with a birth parent--it’s one of the more delicate moments you will encounter in life. ALMA suggests using a script that approaches the meeting from a factual level. “First, it’s helpful to make certain, through fact-checking, that you’re talking to the right person,” Starck says. “Once you get positive answers, simply say, ‘Does the date Dec. 15, 1945, mean anything to you?’ That usually brings the whole point of the conversation right on home.”

Beckstead adds: “We don’t believe in letting another party make the contact for you since it’s such an intimate moment. Searchers must respect the privacy of birth mothers and go directly to them, not to another family member.”

* Even if a reunion is less than euphoric, the process of searching and finding offers adoptees a sense of completion. And if a birth parent is not receptive upon an initial phone call, “all that means is that they’re not ready now,” Starck says.