Inspired

To Carlina, her kidnapper was her birth mother even after turning 23 she had the same story. Meanwhile, her actual parents never stopped searching for her. They were unaware of the fact that they were living just 45 minutes away from their daughter. Steve knew he had to do something about this. “Then Steve read about Carlina White who discovered she was kidnapped as an infant from a hospital in New York. The article mentioned references she used for her search,” his father recalls.

Married Man

By this time he was a married man and was a bit doubtful if he should give it a try or not. In such moments of doubts, Tracey, his wife always supported him and insisted on him giving things a try as it might take him to a point where he could finally give his past life a closure.

Spurred Into Action

Steve got all this energy after reading Carlina’s story. He knew about methods related to genealogy to track long-lost relatives which seemed like a very simple task now, thanks to the internet. He followed the same procedure that Carlina mentioned and started looking for his long forgotten family on a website that is sponsored by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children.

Scrolling, Scrolling

Steve once got access to the site started scrolling and scrolling. After scrolling more than 100s of time, his eyes instantly stopped at a photo and he was numb for a moment. It was just a beginning of all the unraveling process and Steve had no idea of where to start from. Was someone somewhere looking for him? And if that was the case then how did he even end up in foster care. 

Shared The Feeling

When Steve saw the picture of a person looking exactly like him, he immediately called his parents and asked them to check the website. “It was the spitting image of Steve. He called Pat and me immediately and told us to look at the website. We were flabbergasted!” his father recalled.

Missing Person’s Report

The list of missing boys showed a person named Marx Panama Moriarty Barnes who was missing since June 1977. Along with this name, there was an age progression sketch of Mark ie, how he might look now, as a young teen. “I got chills. I was like, holy crap, that’s me,” Steve recalled that moment in an interview.