We Discovered a Half-Sister on MyHeritage. She’d Been Looking for Us for 27 Years

  • By Esther
November 4, 2021
We Discovered a Half-Sister on MyHeritage. She’d Been Looking for Us for 27 Years

Earlier this year, we came across a highly entertaining Twitter thread by Krystal Baez, 29, from Washington. She had received a DNA kit for Christmas and was excited to learn more about her heritage. She ended up discovering a whole lot more than she bargained for: a first cousin she’d never known about who had been looking for her family her entire life.

We reached out to these cousins and hosted them for an Instagram Live reunion in April, 2021.

Later that year, they finally got to meet in person. Here is the video of their incredible reunion:

Here’s the full story — told in part by Krystal’s Twitter thread:

“I got a MyHeritage DNA kit as a Christmas gift. I’m Puerto Rican, and I wanted to learn more about my origins,” says Krystal. “So that was really the only thing I was expecting to learn from it. And then suddenly I got a notification saying that I have a first cousin.”

“Now, my family is big,” she goes on, “but really tight. So we know of each other, and we have big family events together and stuff. I was like — I don’t know this person… maybe MyHeritage was wrong about it?”

The surprise cousin’s name was Hope Fowler — and she had been looking for her biological father’s family her entire life.

“I knew I had a dad. That was it. We just couldn’t figure out who he was,” says Hope. “We did a different DNA test, and I had a bunch of matches, like two cousins twice removed or something, but nobody knew anything. I messaged a ton of people and nobody knew anything.”

Then Hope tried MyHeritage… but the same thing happened. “I got to a point where I just deleted the app,” says Hope. “I wasn’t getting anything, I just got discouraged. But my mom kept the app, and thank God she did!”

Hope got that message from Krystal and messaged her back.

“I was like, here, this is what I know,” says Hope. “And I asked, do you know that person, do you know my father’s first name? She was like: ‘That’s my uncle! I’m literally talking to your sister right now!’”

“I got a random text from my cousin Krystal, and it said that she had a cousin named Hope Fowler,” says Hope’s sister, Victoria. “So we all got into detective mode, Krystal and 6 of our cousins, all together. As soon as she replied, we were all immediately like, ‘Can you hop on video?’”

“I just started bawling my eyes out because I honestly thought I was never going to find him, or my sister, or anything,” says Hope. “And then to find out that I had two other half-siblings that I knew nothing about. It was crazy!”

“If someone would have told me that I had a sister that I never knew about, I probably wouldn’t have believed them,” says Victoria.

“I was in shock at first,” says Hope, “but honestly, I felt like a weight was lifted. My entire life I felt I was missing something, like part of me was missing. I knew that I had a family that I didn’t know. So when I read that message, it was just like, finally! I finally have a family. And then we get on a video call and I have literally 7 cousins and my sister in a group chat, and we’re all just having a conversation like we’ve known each other for years.”

“Everybody reached out to her,” says Krystal. “The whole family was really welcoming and excited. And Hope, she has 3 kids, so now they’ve all got nieces and nephews.”

“My younger sister and I look very similar,” says Hope. “We act kind of similar too.”

“We’ve been talking every day since,” says Krystal. “She actually told us she’d been looking for so long that she gave up looking for us, she gave up looking for that side of her family. Her mom also reached out to me and thanked us all for being so welcoming to Hope. She said that Hope had been wanting contact with her dad’s side of the family her whole life, and they just didn’t have any information on them. So it seems like at this point, everybody is just happy to have finally found each other.”

The family finally had a chance to meet each other in person this July.

“We love family, so to know that it’s growing was exciting,” says Krystal.

“By the way,” adds Krystal, “at the beginning when I took the test, my mom said, ‘Why would you do this? We know all of our family, I can show you the family tree.’ But then I found Hope! So now she wants to test her dad, and all of my family members are going to get a test too.”

Order your MyHeritage DNA kit now — who knows what you might discover!