KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Many people have the privilege of meeting their biological parents for the first time when they first open their eyes. They may be lucky enough to hug them as kids, growing up with them at their side.
One Knoxville woman, Diane Baum, is finally getting that chance at 55 years old, after spending more than 200 hours researching the people who could be members of her biological family. She recently met her biological father for the first time, embracing him in a hug.
"You kind of just melt down right there with her, you know?" said Chuck Baum, her husband.
Diane was adopted when she was 2 months old and said she never searched for her biological family while her adoptive parents were alive. It was a closed adoption, which made it difficult for her to get information from the agency about her biological parents.
"I had no reason to," she said. "Those were the people that cared for me and raised me and I just felt, out of sheer respect, I wouldn't want to do that."
When her adopted father passed away though, she found some information that he saved for her. That little bit of information led to hours of research, sparking curiosity about her biological family.
She ended up discovering that she could have a large family, with a wall filled with notes about different people and their relationships spreading across their home.
"It's surreal that I'm meeting someone that I've always thought about since I've been a little girl," she said. "I just always wondered, who is it? You know?"
She said that she worked with Ancestry.com gave her DNA matches with other people. She and her husband called everyone they could with that information, and she ended up meeting some people in person.
"I feel like I already know them," she said. "Because I've been investigating so much."
Even though she finally met her biological father and two half-siblings, she and her husband said that the journey isn't over. They said there was still work to do, finding more members of their biological family.
"I didn't even know these kinds of emotions existed really, you know?" Diane said.
She met her biological family on a trip to New York and said that more trips are expected in the future.