Two US women have opened up about the time they made a shocking discovery that they were switched at birth after taking a DNA test. Tina Ennis and Jill Lopez, now 57, shared their story on PeopleTV’s entertainment news program People.
It all began in 2019, when Tina had just taken a DNA test to track down her estranged grandfather. The results revealed that her mother Kathryn Jones was not related to her, a discovery that left the family stunned. Tina’s daughter Taylor searched online and found Jill, a woman born on the same day in the same hospital.
“Could this be switched at birth?” Taylor, 24, told the programme.”I looked Jill up on Facebook and found her and I immediately knew.”
Tina’ family reached out to Jill on Facebook and she agreed to send her own DNA for testing. The two women met face-to-face at a diner and Tina saw a striking resemblance between Jill and Kathryn. “Just sitting across the table from someone that you just met who looks just like your mother,” she told People. “What I’ll never forget is when she got her lipstick out and put it on exactly the way my mum does. That’s when I knew. I didn’t need DNA after that.”
The DNA test results confirmed what they already knew, deep down: she was Kathryn’s daughter.
“I left my office and came home. My husband asked, ‘What’s wrong?’ I told him, ‘It’s true. It’s really true. I don’t even know who I am anymore’,” she said.
Tina’s real parents, who raised Jill, passed away before they learned of the switch, so she never got to meet them.
“It will never be the same as it was before,” Taylor said.
“My mum has to live with the fact that she never got to meet her biological parents”.
In a crazy twist of fate, Kathryn’s flower shop created the casket reef for Jill’s father when he passed away in 2001. Both families didn’t know each other back then.
Though still processing the news, Tina said there are silver linings for Jill.
“She got to be with my biological parents, which I heard were really sweet people,” she said.
“And then she also gets to spend time with Kathryn, which is pretty sweet.”
