Whatever happened to ... the Chesapeake genealogist who helps reunite families?

CHESAPEAKE

Deborah Holmes is still helping people fix the broken branches of their family trees so they can find a lost mother, father, child or sibling. The Deep Creek woman has been able to put together eight families torn apart by adoption by using her skills as a senior police officer and genealogist.

Holmes, 46, a sleuth at heart, loves a good mystery.

Last year, she reunited a mother and daughter, separated for more than 40 years by a forced adoption and family secrets. It all started because Holmes and the mother had a name in common and have lived in Virginia.

When Lisa Files called Holmes out of the blue late one night in 2006, she was looking for the birth mother who had been tricked into giving her up for adoption in 1966 in Newark, N.J.

Instead, Files found someone who was willing to listen to her story. Holmes stopped playing one of the video games she uses to wind down before she goes to sleep and said something that changed both their lives.

She told Files that God had her call the wrong Deborah Holmes for a reason and that she was going to help her. She papered online genealogy message boards with requests for information. Co-workers and friends pitched in after she told them what she was trying to do.

From beginning to end, it took her roughly five days to reunite Files, of Jackson, Miss., with her mother, Deborah Lynn Holmes Patterson, a radio and TV personality in Roanoke Rapids, N.C.

"I'll never forget when she told me that now she knows the reason why she was named Deborah," Patterson said. "I get goose bumps when I tell you this."

Holmes had been teased about her first name by her family for years. It isn't a common name in her family. She told Patterson that she figured God had her father name her Deborah for a reason.

Considering how little information she had to go on, and the fact that some of the adoption records were incorrect, it's a miracle that Holmes was able to find Patterson at all. She had moved, married and had three other daughters.

As it turns out, Patterson and Files had been searching for each other for years. Thanks to Holmes, they are no longer strangers. They talk on the phone daily and spend holidays together.

"It's just like a family should be," Patterson said.

Files and Patterson have talked about Files moving to North Carolina once she becomes an empty-nester. Holmes and the women have created a "sistership," a kinship that will last the rest of their lives.

Every so often, Holmes gets a telephone call or e-mail from a stranger trying to find a birth parent or a child they put up for adoption. She does what she can.

"Sometimes I'm successful, and sometimes I'm not," Holmes said. "I leave it all in God's hands."

Janette Rodrigues, (757) 222-5208, janette.rodrigues@pilotonline.com