DECEMBER 2019 • LONGISLANDPRESS.COM 49
Lori Marsden and Jimmie Ebell, her half brother.
THE DNA DETECTIVES
BY CLAUDE SOLNIK
Lori Marsden, of East Hampton, remembers a teacher in elementary school asking
students where their family was from. She didn’t raise her hand.
“When you’re an adoptee, you don’t know,” she says. “When you go to a doctor as
a young child, they ask for the family history. You say, ‘I don’t know. I’m adopted.’ It
becomes this thing in your psyche.”
Marsden recently found out who her parents were through DNA testing and a
little detective work via Ancestry.com. She also got some help from members of a
Facebook group called DNA Detectives and from someone who became what she
calls her “search angel” — a genealogist who helps people figure out their genealogy.
“Adoptees typically don’t know their genetic history in a closed adoption,” she says.
“You know nothing.” WHAT’S INSIDE continued on page 50
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ACTS OF PETS
KINDNESS
PARENTING
FAMILY & EDUCATION
HOW TECHNOLOGY IS HELPING ADOPTEES FIND THEIR PARENTS
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