42-year-old Virginia man Jimmy Lippert Thyden hugged his biological mother for the very first time after they were separated at birth.
Forty-two years ago, hospital workers took Maria Angelica Gonzalez’ son from her arms immediately after his birth, and she was later told that he had died. Now, they got to meet face-to-face since his birth.
The heartwarming moment came after month’s long, international search for his biological family, and the 42-year-old explained to The Associated Press how he approached their first meeting.
Hola, Mama,” Jimmy Lippert Thyden told Maria Angelica Gonzalez in Spanish, when the two met for the very first time at her home in Valdivia, Chile, in August. “I love you very much,” he said as they embraced, both teary-eyed and emotional.
The reunion included more than just Thyden, as he traveled to Chile with his wife, Johannah, and their two daughters, Ebba Joy, 8, and Betty Grace, 5, to meet his newly discovered family.
“Mijo (son), you have no idea the oceans I’ve cried for you, how many nights I’ve laid awake praying that God let me live long enough to learn what happened to you,” Thyden recalls his birth mother’s saying during their remarkable reunion
“It knocked the wind out of me. I was suffocated by the gravity of this moment,” he said during an interview from Ashburn, Virginia, where he works as a criminal defense attorney. “How do you hug someone in a way that makes up for 42 years of hugs?”
According to Thyden, he was taken from Gonzalez’s care and placed in an incubator. She was then instructed to leave the hospital.When she returned to get her baby, she was told he had died and his body had been disposed of.
He was a case of “counterfeit adoption,” a child-trafficking scheme that coincided with many other human rights violations that took place during the 17-year reign of Gen. Augusto Pinochet, who led a Chilean coup to overthrow Marxist President Salvador Allende in the 1970s.
“The real story was these kids were stolen from poor families, poor women that didn’t know. They didn’t know how to defend themselves,” said Constanza del Rio, founder and director and Nos Buscamos.
During the dictatorship, at least 3,095 people were killed, according to government figures, and tens of thousands more were tortured or jailed for political reasons.
