The Beguiling Case of Adoption, Secrets, and Sisterhood

How a novice PI solved a decades-old mystery with naivety and spiritual guidance.

Bob Olson is a former skeptic and private eye who has investigated life after death for 27 years. He shares meaningful stories to expand minds, comfort grief, and uplift souls. He’s the host of Afterlife TV, author of Answers About The Afterlife and The Magic Mala, and founder of the directory of credible psychics, mediums, animal communicators, and intuitive practitioners, BestPsychicDirectory.com.

Photo by Ludovic Gauthier on Unsplash

There was no school for private investigators in the 1980s. All I had was a bachelor’s degree in criminology and a pragmatic mind for complex thinking. I eventually found an employer who became my mentor, but I was trying to find my way in the dark before that. There’s no question that beginner’s luck was my friend as a novice PI. In hindsight, I realize that I was also spiritually guided to succeed in many of my investigations.

Before I graduated college, I owned a landscaping and odd-job business that employed local high school teenagers. One of these guys told his mother I had started a private investigation agency, so she called me. Her name was Gloria and she had a personal matter that had her wondering if she should hire a private eye.

Shortly before Gloria’s mother died, she confided in Gloria about a long-held secret from her past. Her mother felt the need to unburden herself by revealing that she had birthed a child out of wedlock when she was a teenager. Being under the age of eighteen when she got pregnant, her parents sent her away to a home for unwed mothers known as the Salvation Army Women’s Home and Hospital.

During this era, teenage pregnancies were often stigmatized as sinful and shameful, not only for unmarried mothers but for their families. Consequently, young mothers were frequently banished from their homes and sent to live in institutional-like settings, often housing hospitals where they could deliver these babies. Historically, these mothers were subjected to forced adoptions, with limited or no opportunity to bond with their infants after birth. While this may not have been the experience of every teenage mother, it rang true for Gloria’s mother.

Gloria’s mother described a lonely, fear-filled stay at one of these homes. She trembled while vividly describing the heart-wrenching moment the nurses took her newborn daughter away, denying her the chance to hold her. She explained that the shame her parents felt, along with her father’s anger toward her, compelled her to keep the secret throughout her life. Even after her parents passed away, the weight of the secret remained too overwhelming to share. Sharing this secret with Gloria provided her the relief she so desperately needed, and it allowed Gloria the possibility to connect with the sister she’d never met.

Gloria came to me, hoping I might find this sister. Fortunately, her mother remembered where the Salvation Army home was located and her daughter’s birth date. Armed with this scant information, I took the case. I was too naïve to realize that my chances of finding Gloria’s sister were slim. I came to learn that most private investigators didn’t take adoption cases because adoption records were usually sealed. Yet, if I hadn’t been so naïve to take the case, I never would have learned that Salvation Army records about these homes for unwed mothers were not sealed.

This story is no longer available. It has been published in a new book titled: Insight from Hindsight: Stories that reveal what life is trying to teach you

Insight from Hindsight will be available September 2024 on Amazon in paperback, Kindle, and audiobook!