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Posted September 2
New Jersey Man Credits PI and Facebook With Finding Siblings He Never Knew
A New Jersey man had a joyful reunion on Sunday with the brother and sister he never knew - and says he owes it all to a PI and the social networking web site Facebook, the New York Daily News reports.
Jonathan Frank, who was adopted as a baby, learned his siblings' names just last week.
After some savvy clicking on the Internet and a couple of phone calls, the three met for the first time.
"Facebook is amazing," said Frank, 38, of Bayonne, New Jersey, draping an arm around each new sibling. "I feel great - like I won the Mega Millions."
Over grilled steaks and homemade ziti, the three tried to catch up on the missed decades, sharing baby photos and stories.
"It's one of those miracle stories," said his newfound brother, Joh n Martino, 34, a father of three who hosted the reunion in his Old Bridge, N.J., home.
"Now, it's catchup time," said sister Janine Martino, 36, who has two children. "I'm overwhelmed, excited."
Frank, a grocery store manager and dad of two daughters, has known since he was 5 years old that he was adopted.
His adoptive parents told him his biological mom's last name, Sideris, and explained that he was special, since they chose him to be a part of their family.
While Frank says he values their honesty and good hearts, he had a difficult childhood in Queens and the Bronx, and yearned to find his birth mother. "I've had a void and hole in my heart," he said.
Frank made another attempt to find her last week, giving all of the information he had to a private investigator.
Four days later, he found out that he was three years too late to contact his biological mother, Nelley, who died of liver cancer in 2006.
The investigator told him that his birth mother was a teen when she had put him up for adoption, and later married a man named John Martino. They had two children named John and Janine, making them Frank's half-siblings.
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