Tyler Graf in Houston in November.Photo: Marie De Jesus
Tyler Graf knew as a child in suburban St. Paul, Minn., that the reason he looked different from his family was because he’d been born in Chile. It took more than three decades to discover the shocking truth of his adoption: he, like thousands of other babies in Chile in the ’70s and ’80s, had been stolen from his birth parents.
Now Graf, 39, is on a mission to help others Chilean adoptees like him find their biological families through his organizationConnecting Roots. “Seeing the happiness that this creates when these two families meet for the first time, to know that there was a lifetime of pain that is now going to be patched, it’s incredible,” Graf tells PEOPLE in this week’s issue, of his work with Connecting Roots.
Graf with his parents in 1983, flying home to Minnesota from Chile.
Graf and his adoptive parents always thought his biological mother had agreed to the adoption because she couldn’t afford to care for him. And that, Graf says, left him with a sense of loss: “You wonder, ‘How can someone just give someone away? Was I not good enough?’ That lingers through your life.”
For more on Tyler Graf and other adoptees who were stolen at birth, pick up the latest issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday, or subscribehere.
Two days later he was on a Zoom call with one of his biological sisters (a translator helped them since Graf didn’t speak Spanish). “I can’t believe you are alive!” she said, covering her mouth in shock. “Mom thought you were her angel.” Graf, who knew nothing of Chile’s dark history or his biological mother’s agony, was stunned. “I thought, ‘This can’t be real. This is like a movie plot,’ " he says. When his adoptive mother learned the news, “my first thought was the pain this had caused his birth mom,” she says.
Graf had his first call with Hilda on Father’s Day 2021: “She has the most soothing voice,” he says. “To hear her say she loved me was amazing.” A DNA test confirmed the match, and that October, Hilda flew to Texas and held Tyler for the first time since his birth. “We fit together like a perfect puzzle,” he says. For Hilda, “knowing my son was alive was the most beautiful news I have ever been given,” she says. “I asked him to look at me with his big eyes and it was the same look that I remembered from when he was born.”
Since then, Graf, who learned he has three biological sisters, has visited Chile twice and is learning Spanish. In September his two mothers met in Texas: “I see the understanding and love between my moms,” says Graf, who is married and has a 2-year-old son. “There’s no resentment or hate. It was a rough past, but we can have a beautiful new beginning.” When Carol saw Hilda in the airport, “all I could do was hug her.”
Tyler Graf’s adoptive mother, Carol Graf Carnish (right) and his biological mother, Hilda Quezada Godoy, met in September. “They were both victims,” says Tyler.
Tyler Graf started the non-profit Connecting Roots to help other families reunite.
source: people.com
