SALEM, Ore. (KOIN) — Justin Kragt grew up in Amity but now lives in Salem. But he was born in South Korea and abandoned when he was about a year old.
“I was told that I was found in a theater, which was next to a police station,” the 36-year-old told KOIN 6 News. That “was actually fairly common in the early ’80s in South Korea when there was a lot of poverty.”
About 4 years ago he wanted to learn more about his background and decided to do a DNA test with 23andMe. He said he found 4th or 5th cousins.
Renee Alanko was also born in South Korea and she, too, was abandoned.
“I was approximately 4, so they looked at me and said, ‘OK, she’s 4,'” she told KOIN 6 News. “I was found on March 24, and they made my birthday March 25.”
She was adopted to a family in the US and grew up in the Bay area.
“It was a great place to grow up,” she told KOIN 6 News. “I was actually the 2nd Korean adoptee that my mom had, and she had adopted a boy before me.”
Now 38, she decided to do a DNA test with 23andMe because she said she might have kids soon and wanted to find out about any hereditary health links. She did the test, sent it off and got the results about a week later, May 26, 2018.
The health results were fine, she said. “Then I started exploring the other tabs just to see what else was on there, and I saw under ‘Tools’ it said, ‘DNA relatives’ and I said, oh and I just clicked on it thinking, yeah, I’ll probably have a trillion 5th cousins and stuff.”
She found a lot more than that.
“It said ‘parents’ and it said me and then it said ‘Justin, 35, Salem, Oregon’ and it said, ’23andMe predicts this is your brother,” Renee said. “In fact, I was a full sibling of this guy.”
Reaching out to her brother
Renee looked up Justin online and saw he, too, was adopted. She found him on Facebook and wondered if she should send him a message.
She did.
“I wrote, ‘Hi, Justin. I think I may be your biological sister.’ And I had no idea what else to say, so I just sent it like that.”
Justin saw that message and said he’ll never forget it.
“It’s kind of you’re happy, you’re sad, you’re excited, you’re shocked, you don’t know what to do. It’s all these emotions around you, and it’s just, like, ahhhhh, I don’t know exactly what to feel right now,” he said.
Renee said she heard back from him the next day “and I think he said something like, ‘Is this a joke?'”
It wasn’t a joke. They connected and have stayed connected ever since.
“I send her texts and I send her emails all the time, letting her know things about me that I think of,” Justin said. “She might like to know what my favorite movie is. It’s getting back to rebuilding a relationship, but starting that as adults.”
Renee said they talked and texted constantly for the next month, and then she decided to come to Oregon to meet her brother.
“It didn’t really hit me until I went to Oregon, like, 2 weeks ago and met him for the first time exactly what the heck I was doing,” she said.
The meeting at PDX
Renee arrived at PDX to meet Justin on September 15 — his birthday.
“It’s the best birthday present I ever got,” he said. “You know, even though we’re strangers I felt kind of when I saw her and I saw her smile and I recognized that face there was something in me. We weren’t strangers anymore.”
Renee agreed.
“It felt completely like I knew him,” she said. “The biggest thing is I feel like I have an anchor in somebody or something.”
They’re both musical — she plays piano, he sings — and they both have their MBAs.
She said she’s overjoyed to be a big sister to him. “He’s definitely going to be coming here (to California) in December.”
“This blindsided me,” Justin said. “But it’s changing my life for the better and I’m very, very much overjoyed with her presence and the relationship we’re going to continue to build.”
