He believed his biological parents died 50 years ago—until a phone number in random email changed his life
Good things might happen even after a person is close to giving up on an endeavor. A man thought that his biological parents had died when he was a toddler. The 50-year-old Kirk Kellerhals had been adopted by American parents and had always struggled with understanding who he was. He had no hopes of finding out about his parents when he took a DNA test after being separated from them for five decades, but it ended up yielding surprising results, per PEOPLE.
Kirk was born in Vietnam during the Vietnam War and had no idea what had happened before an Army captain adopted him as a baby. His parents didn't know much about his biological mother and father either and had believed that both of them were dead. The only thing Kirk knew about his past was that his mother was probably a Vietnamese national, making him half-Vietnamese. "My mother was listed as a Vietnamese national and was deceased and my father was also listed as deceased. I’ve grown up my whole life thinking my parents were dead, that both my parents were dead." He had eventually made peace with not knowing his parents and wasn't expecting much information as he grew up and had a family.
However, his wife encouraged him to take a DNA test back in 2017. Kirk wasn't expecting anything to come out of it. Nonetheless, he was in for a big surprise. "I decided what the heck, let’s just go put the controversy to rest and we’ll figure out where I’m from. So, I went ahead and submitted the DNA test." The most he expected was a zip code or a cousin. "That’s all I was expecting, if anything at all, but I wasn’t expecting to find anything." A few weeks later, Kirk received an email from an unknown person, right before he received his test results. He didn't even open the first email, thinking that it was a scam. A lot changed after opening the second one. "It was a notification that there was some[one] matching my DNA. When I opened it, I saw it was the same name as the person who sent me the email prior to that. That’s when it dawned on me, 'Oh my gosh. This is a Vietnamese name.' I was freaking out."
The email was from his biological mother, who had also attached a phone number. "It was surreal. It’s one of those things, it’s one of the few times in my life where I actually had to sit down and catch my breath and try to realize that I wasn’t dreaming." According to PBS, at the end of the Vietnam War, the US government airlifted many Vietnamese children to be adopted by American, Canadian, European and Australian families. The initiative was called Operation Babylift and brought over 3,300 children out of the country. Many people with mixed children were concerned about their children's safety in Vietnam and many children were put up for adoption without the knowledge of their parents.
Kirk's 67-year-old mom, Thuy-Nga Thi Nibblett, revealed that her parents were unhappy that she had gotten pregnant with an American soldier's baby. They also gave Kirk up for adoption without her knowledge. The mom also told him that his biological father, Sheldon "Skip" Soule, was alive as well. The 76-year-old had been living in New York and had left Vietnam before the man's mom knew she was pregnant. Nibblett also moved to the United States in 1971 to look for her son. It wasn't easy for Kirk in the beginning, but he was happy to get to know his parents. "I’m not going to pretend like it was all puppies and rainbows — it was stressful trying to process everything. The end result is it’s definitely a blessing. It was a blessing for everyone."