Swedish Adoptee Discovers She Was Kidnapped From Colombia at 1 Year Old

Paula Dahlberg from Vittaryd, Sweden, was born in Colombia and adopted as a child by a couple in Härnösand, where she grew up. In the adoption papers, she was given a new name: Paola Andrea became Paula, with Andrea as a middle name.

As a teenager, she began to wonder more and more about her origins and what had really happened. She knew the name of her biological mother, Lina Maria, and that there was no registered father. That was all. Everything else was classified.

When she contacted the Adoption Center, she was advised to stop looking. They said that Lina Maria was probably ashamed, as people looked down on those who had children out of wedlock, and that she had surely moved on in life. If Paula suddenly appeared, she could complicate things for Lina Maria.

Paula Dahlberg

A DNA Match after 5 years

Paula didn’t give up. When she became a mother herself in 2008, she became determined to continue her search. She joined adoption groups and contacted organizations in Colombia, but was met time and again with the same answer: “There are no records left.”

When private DNA tests became available, her hope was rekindled. In 2019, MyHeritage launched DNA Quest, a pro bono campaign to provide free DNA tests to adoptees and their families. Paula applied and was selected. She received many matches, but only to distant relatives… until one day in March 2024.

On the other side of the globe, in Medellín, Colombia, Lina Maria had never stopped looking for her daughter. A man named Oscar, himself adopted from Colombia to Sweden, bought a MyHeritage DNA test for her. And on that day in March 2024, they got the DNA Match that would change everything.

“There is a woman on Facebook who says she is your mother”

Lina Maria was the first to become aware of the match. It was 8 o’clock in the evening, and a volunteer at an organization in Colombia that helps reunited adoptees with their families helped her search for Paula online.

There were 4 people on Facebook with Paula’s name, but Lina Maria immediately recognized her daughter by her birthmark. Both Lina Maria and the woman from the organization wrote to Paula, but since it was two in the morning in Sweden, she didn’t see the messages. Lina Maria also contacted Paula’s husband, Simon.

Simon woke up early to get ready for work, and when he checked his phone, he saw a message from an unknown woman in Colombia claiming to be Paula’s biological mother. He went back into the bedroom and woke her, but Paula was so sleepy that it took almost an hour before his words really sank in.

Lina Maria (Paula’s biological mother)

“Now that I’ve found you, I am truly living again”

The adoption papers stated that Lina Maria approved the adoption of her daughter, so two of Paula’s first questions were: why was I placed for adoption? Do I have any siblings?

Lina Maria’s answer came immediately: she had never wanted to place Paula for adoption. She was 15 years old and had come to Medellín to work when Paula was a year old. There, she was tricked into giving her daughter to a woman, who in turn gave her to social services, who then placed her for adoption. And yes, Paula has a sister who is 3 years younger: Janeth.

Since then, Paula became aware that major investigations are underway in Colombia regarding adoptions in the 1970s and 1980s, where several people from Colombia’s social services have been indicted for involvement in child trafficking.

What moved Paula most deeply was learning that she was never a secret. Lina Maria and her mother, Paula’s biological grandmother, both had pictures of Paula as a baby and a toddler at home. Everyone in the family knew she existed. Everyone knew that Lina Maria was searching. She had never been ashamed of Paula. She even told Paula, “Now that I have found you, I am truly living again.”

Lina Maria with Paula as a little girl — the first photo Paula received from her biological mother.

Lina Maria’s struggle to find her daughter had never stopped. For all those years, she had worked right next to the orphanage where Paula was once placed and passed by it every day. It was a daily reminder of what she had lost and never stopped searching for.

Contact with Lina Maria also gave Paula answers she didn’t know she needed. It turned out that the information in the adoption papers was wrong; not even Paula’s birth date was right. She was actually born on June 25, 1985, not the date that had been on her papers her whole life. She was a year older than she’d thought.

The meeting in Medellín

The autumn after the match, Paula traveled with her husband, Simon, and their two youngest sons, Joran and Varchel, to Colombia. Lina Maria had made a large welcome sign with the text: Welcome to your place in Colombia. It was incredibly emotional.

Lina Maria had waited 37 years to hug her daughter

Paula felt that the trip and the meeting with her biological family had been healing. Now she knows where she comes from. She found out she was born in her grandmother’s kitchen, with her grandmother and a midwife. She also knows her father was a teenage fling and that he disappeared from her life before they even knew Paula was in the womb.

All of this has been deeply healing for Lina Maria and her mother (Paula’s biological grandmother) as well. Lina Maria had long been angry with her mother for not helping out more when Paula was a baby, because if she had, Lina Maria might not have had to go to Medellín to work, and then everything could have been different. But Paula’s grandmother had a baby herself around the same time, so she already had her hands full.

Paula was struck by how much she looks like her mother; the DNA test seemed hardly necessary. She also saw she has many similarities with her little sister in terms body language, facial expressions, and humor.

The family gathered for Paula’s sister Janeth’s 36th birthday

Paula, half-sister Janeth, and Lina Maria

Lina Maria and Paula with Paula’s husband, kids, and niece

For Paula, the DNA test hasn’t just provided answers to the questions that followed her since her teens. It has given her something she didn’t know she was missing — a whole family who always wanted her. A mother, a little sister, a grandmother. And the truth about her own history.

Have you also made an unexpected or touching discovery using MyHeritage? We would love to hear your story! Share it with us via this form or email us at stories@myheritage.com.