Lost & Found

Amanda Hitchcock was missing something in her life. Something neither her husband nor her two young daughters could fulfill. The 26-year-old from Redlands began searching. “I felt a void, a great big question mark.” Now, after three years, she would fill that void.

She finally found Patty Lebel, 42, some 3,000 miles away in Poland, Me.--the woman who had given birth to Hitchcock. “The first time I dialed Patty’s number, I was shaking. . . . We were like school kids, laughing, giggling and talking at the same time.”

That first call lasted almost an hour, but the reunion would have to wait four months. On April 12 at 7:30 p.m., Lebel’s car turned into Hitchcock’s driveway. Lebel opened the door before the car stopped as her two grandchildren ran toward the car screaming, “Grandma Patty, Grandma Patty!” Then it was Hitchcock’s turn. Hitchcock and Lebel hugged.

Soon, the pieces of the puzzle came into place. In 1968, Lebel was 16 and pregnant. Because of her Catholic upbringing, she was forced to leave school in Montclair. “My mom arranged for me to disappear and take care of a sick aunt.” Actually, she was sent to St. Anne’s Maternity Ward in L.A., where she gave birth to a daughter she named Teresa. She saw Teresa for only a few moments before she was given up for adoption.

Hitchcock’s adoptive mother, Beverly Roberts, died when she was 8. And her dad, David Roberts, died five years ago. She contacted her birth father in January. He never knew he had a daughter. Lebel recently gave Hitchcock a page out of her 1994 calendar book in which she had written, “Where are you Teresa?” The note was scribbled on July 19, Hitchcock’s birthday.