After nearly eight decades apart, a woman has finally reunited with the brother she never knew existed.
Marian Griffin, now 80, was placed in foster care shortly after her birth in 1945 and later adopted by a Lutheran minister and his family, she told ABC News.
It wasn’t until July 2024 that Griffin discovered she had an older brother—Donald Hefke—who was not only still alive but had been trying to find her for most of his life.
“I thought it was a scam,” Griffin recalled, describing the moment Hefke’s daughter, Denise Baker, reached out to her with the stunning revelation. Baker had also spent decades searching for her long-lost aunt.
Hefke, 81, is just a year older than Griffin. Both siblings were placed in foster care in 1946. Their biological mother, suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder after Griffin’s birth, was institutionalized. Their father was unable to care for them, ABC News reported. They also had another brother, Ernest, who was born deaf and has since passed away.
Hefke was raised by a foster family and later joined the U.S. Air Force. In 1963, driven by a desire to learn more about his origins, he contacted the foster agency and discovered he had a sister named Marian.
However, when Hefke tried to reach out, his letters never reached her. Griffin told ABC News her adoptive parents had hidden the correspondence.
“Our kids could have grown up together,” she said. “Instead, we were separated because my parents would not tell me that my brother wrote to me and was looking for me.”
Baker later took up the search herself, spending 20 years trying to locate Griffin. Her breakthrough came when she found a family tree online that had been uploaded by Griffin’s son—finally pointing her to the right person.
“I still can’t believe he found me,” Griffin said.
Once the connection was confirmed, Griffin and Hefke spoke on the phone for the first time.
“He says, ‘Mariane, Mariane is that you? Oh my goodness, I’ve been looking for you Mariane!’” she recalled in an interview with KRCR-TV. “He couldn’t even stop saying my name.”
While Hefke is unable to travel from Florida due to health issues, Baker visited Griffin in California on his behalf, ABC News reported. Griffin now hopes to make the trip to see her brother in person.
“Oh my gosh, it would be wonderful—even for a few days,” she told KRCR. “We have 80 years to catch up on.”
