Woman tracks down father after 34 years- so he adopts her

34-year-old Kerry Saucedo from California, grew up without a father. 

Her mother had only had a brief fling with her mother, and had fallen out of contact with him before realising that she was pregnant. 

In the 80's and 90's there wasn't many resources available for tracking down her biological father, so Kerry felt like she was missing out. 

“She raised me on [her] own so I had always wondered who my real biological father was,” she told Inside Edition. “That was something in my life that felt like something was missing and I felt 50 percent anonymous.”

As well as this, she didn't even know her father's proper name. the name she knew,  Mark Saucedo, was his middle name and she didn't know the correct spelling of his Spanish surname. 

“Needless to say my search was very difficult to try with the resources I had.”

Her breakthrough finally came in June 2017 when she was introduced to 23AndMe, a DNA testing service that matched her with relatives. 

For Kerry it was easy to tell whose genes belonged to whom as her mother is British and Irish and her father Hispanic. 

 “My third match was a woman whose last name seemed Spanish and I knew this had to be my dad’s side,” Kerry explained. 

That match turned out to be a great aunt on her father's side, and after some more digging Kerry found her father's sister on Facebook. 

Her new-found aunt gave Kerry her father's phone number, and she called him for the very first time. 

"I called him and we talked for the first time," she said. "He was just like, 'I am so sorry. I didn’t know about you and I feel horrible I missed out on your life, but I am your dad.'"

Now living in Oregon, he had married a short time after meeting Kerry's mother, she had a half-sister just seven months younger than her. See flew to see him and they instantly clicked.  

"He literally took over the father role right way.

"That day I met him and it was like literally looking into a mirror. I waited my whole life for that moment and it was just euphoria and honestly it felt like I was in a dream because I just thought I would never ever know my dad."

Wanting to change her name from Fortuna to his, Saucedo, they consulted a lawyer. He said the easiest way to do this was for her father to adopt her- so he did. 

The adoption became official in August and Kerry is planning on moving to Oregon to be closer to her father. 

"If it wasn't for the DNA, I wouldn't know my dad right now," she said. 

What a happy ending to decades of searching!