Sisters Enjoy Warm Reunion Agency Helps Siblings Separated By Adoption Meet

Kathy Satack couldn’t resist any longer. She just had to find her birth mother, the woman who gave her away.

All Satack knew about her infancy was that she was born in Spokane at Deaconess Medical Center on Nov. 15, 1952, then adopted two years later.

Three years ago, the Tacoma woman asked the Washington Adoptees Rights Movement to search for her mother.

She hoped to learn more about her own medical history. But there was more.

She was hurt. How could her mother abandon her? “I couldn’t understand why she did what she did.”

Satack’s search took her on a wild, emotional ride of pain and elation, beginning with a hunt for her mother and ending with a search for the sister she never knew she had.

Hundreds of adopted adults now search for their birth parents every year in Washington. WARM, a nonprofit support group, handles up to 20 requests a month.

Before 1990, a search required a court ruling that there was an important reason - such as the need for medical information - to warrant it.

Now, in Washington and 17 other states, simply curious people can get “confidential intermediaries” like WARM to search for their biological parents, children or siblings.

With the speed of modern electronic records, people are often found almost immediately.

The growing popularity of the searches worry some adoption-rights groups, which fear the confidentiality and privacy of adoptions are now routinely violated.

“People need to think this through a little more, because you’re opening a Pandora’s box,” said Mary Beth Style, vice president of the National Council for Adoption, in Washington, D.C.

Style said birth parents and adopted children who don’t want to be contacted can suffer serious psychological blows when the unwanted call comes.

“We think you’re going to hear more and more complaints,” Style said.

The council asserts that searches should only be allowed if both the adopted child and birth parent welcome the potential reunion by registering with the state, as is the Idaho policy.

When Satack decided to look for her mother, she paid $360 to join WARM. She gave the organization a letter and a family photograph, to be passed along to her mom - if the woman could be found.

After WARM got a court order to unseal the adoption records, it took intermediary Mickey LeClair four months to locate Satack’s mother.

The woman was clearly reluctant to consider a reunion.

But she agreed to receive the letter and picture from Satack - if her own identity and address remained confidential.

The letter was sent, then Satack nervously waited for her mother’s response - through LeClair. Months went by. Now, it’s been almost three years. She’s still waiting.

“Kathy did wait a long time,” LeClair said. “I’ve heard her mother’s voice and she hasn’t … There’s a lot of unfairness in this.”

But LeClair said she had to protect the mother’s right to privacy.

All Satack was allowed to discover about her mom was that she was healthy, born in 1926, college educated, and of Irish and German descent.

Satack felt rejected that her mother wouldn’t respond. “I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me,” she said.

LeClair offered Satack something else to contemplate. “I think you have a sister,” LeClair told her.

Satack was stunned. A sister! The thought had never occurred to her.

Records showed Satack’s mother delivered another girl 13 months before her - at Spokane’s Sacred Heart Medical Center - and put her up for adoption, too.

Was Satack interested in trying to contact her sister?

Fearing two-time rejection, Satack hesitated. “I was worried she wouldn’t want to meet me.” She waited more than a year, then told LeClair to go ahead.

LeClair said she tries to handle her work as delicately as possible, especially when contacting people for the first time.

“You must be appropriate. You must be sensitive and give them all the time they need.”

She said many birth parents are embarrassed by the fact they had babies out of wedlock and put them up for adoption.

But she said searches are usually rewarding and fascinating, noting parents and children who’ve never met often have similar handwriting and sound alike on the telephone - as did Satack and her mother.

LeClair said she’s well-received at least 90 percent of the time, although many are suspicious and reluctant at first.

When Spokane nurse Ginger Barrett received a cryptic note in the mail in June 1994, she thought it was a sales pitch.

“I have some very interesting information for you,” was all it said, and asked her to call LeClair.

Barrett dismissed it, but remained curious. Then another message came a month later from the same woman. It mentioned Barrett was adopted and LeClair had information for her that might be interesting.

Barrett panicked. Was this LeClair her real mother? Barrett had never wanted to search for her. And now, it seemed, her mother was tracking her down.

After talking with friends, Barrett finally called LeClair.

“No, I’m not your mother,” LeClair assured her, then told her she had a biological sister. Was she willing to get a letter from her?

A sister? “That stopped my heart for a second,” Barrett recalled.

She got Satack’s letter. It explained that she also has a brother-in-law, two nieces and a nephew.

Barrett hesitated again. She paced in her back yard in north Spokane, then finally made a call to Satack - through LeClair.

“What took you so long?” was Satack’s first question.

The two sisters discovered they talk and look much alike, despite their different hair colors. Satack’s middle daughter looks like Barrett.

“We have a lot of similarities,” Satack said. “It’s scary.”

They spent last Christmas together, and plan to get together for this one, too. Barrett, single, plans to move to Tacoma within the next year, to live close to her sister.

She doesn’t entertain hopes of ever meeting her birth mother. “I had such a strong family. The people who raised me were family. I’ve always been grateful to my biological mother that she did give me up.”

Satack, however, still wants to meet her mother. “I just feel the guilt was so overwhelming for her … She can’t deal with it.”

Satack said she knows all she can do is hope her mother deals with it, and decides to contact her.

“My gut tells me she will some day.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color photo