I remember getting a little plastic bracelet when my first son was born, with his name on it. My wife and he also had similar bracelets. We were told that these bracelets were supposed to eliminate any confusion as to whose baby was whose. Seemed a little silly at the time, like some bad soap opera plot device, but it turns out that it really does happen sometimes.
For Kay Rene (Reed) Qualls (on the left below) and DeeAnn (Angell) Shafer (on the right), it took 56 years – nearly a lifetime – before they even figured out what had happened.
courtesy E.J. Harris, the East Oregonian
As the East Oregonian reports:
Imagine cruising happily through the world – falling in love, raising a family and otherwise carving out a successful life – when results of a DNA test turn everything upside down.
This is a story that reads just like a dime store novel. It starts with an 86-year old neighbor who told Kay Rene’s “brother” Bobby Reed that she had “something to get off her chest.”
She claimed Marjorie Angell, DeeAnn’s mom, had insisted she’d come home with the wrong baby. She said nurses had taken her baby and the Reed baby, both bald and weighing about 6 pounds, and bathed them together. When they returned with the babies, they’d been switched, Marjorie had said.
The other mother, Donalda Reed, had been heavily medicated when her baby was born and wasn’t aware of the controversy. The nurses brushed off Marjorie’s doubts.
The sweet part of the story is that both of the babies appear to have grown up to lead full happy lives, with children and grandchildren. And after the shock of discovering that their whole life wasn’t what it had appeared to be, the two have become close friends. More than that, they say that they are “sisters.”
Heck, they even share a birthday.
One of the things I love best about family law is the plethora of crazy stories. But most of these stories are sad, if not tragic.
So it’s always nice to see people landing on their feet after such a whirlwind.
Bobby Reed, who thought his whole life that Kay Rene was his blood sister, summed it up well:
“Kay Rene will always be my sister,” he said. “Now I have another sister. All this has done is extend my family.”
For the rest of this really great story (and there’s plenty more), check out the East Oregonian.
