For his whole life, Kirk Kellerhals believed that his parents had died in the war in Vietnam—where he was born. He never imagined that he would reunite with his real mother for the first time in America some 47 years later.
Kirk was just 2 years old when he was adopted from an orphanage in Vietnam. His mother was a young Vietnamese woman named Thuy-Nga Thi. His father was an American serviceman.
In those days, the Vietnamese people frowned upon American interracial mixing, as Kirk’s mother had done. Compounding this, Thuy-Nga was just 17 and unmarried at the time when she became pregnant, and her father was very displeased by all of this.
So he took the baby away immediately after he was born, and she never saw him again for nearly five decades. She only knew that it was a boy, as the doctor had said so.
Meanwhile, Kirk’s American father had been transferred to a different base, and he lost touch with Thuy-Nga. Nor did he ever learn about her pregnancy or that she had given birth.
At some point during those years, Thuy-Nga had moved to San Antonio, Texas, and had married an American. During those many years, she had hoped and prayed to God to help her find her lost son.
“I knew that God would answer if I just keep faith and keep believing,” she said.
Finally, in 2015, Thuy-Nga decided to do a DNA search with Family Tree DNA in the hopes that Kirk might do the same. By that time, he was already in his forties and was also living in America—in Virginia Beach on the east coast. He had also gotten married and had children of his own.
Coincidentally, Kirk had also reached out to Family Tree in search of his lost family—whom he had never met before.
While he was somewhat hesitant about it at first, his wife had persuaded him to submit his DNA, and miraculously, just days later, Kirk received an email from Thuy-Nga, who told him to call her.
“I got the email from Family Tree DNA that the results were back and they had a match,“ he had told CBN News. ”It said parent-child match. I just kind of shook my head and said that’s a mistake. That’s impossible.”
Then, in the summer of 2017, Kirk and his birth-mother, Thuy-Nga, who hadn’t seen each other in nearly 50 years, were reunited. She and her husband had driven 1,600 miles to Kirk and his family’s home in Virginia Beach.
They pulled up in a white pickup truck into Kirk’s driveway, where he was waiting. The second Thuy-Nga got out, they embraced, and she was in tears.
“Thank you God for bringing my son to me,” she cried.
After an extended embrace and introduction in the driveway, Kirk, his wife, and his kids, along with Thuy-Nga and her husband embarked on the momentous journey of getting to know each other.
Kirk described the moment of their reunion as “surreal” when he spoke to CBN News, adding, “To see her pulling up, I don’t want to say out of body experience, but pretty darn close.”
