NEED TO KNOW
- After nearly 80 years, long-lost sister siblings Marian Griffin and Donald Hefke have found each other
- Separated shortly after Marian’s birth, both siblings were adopted by different families — and while Hefke spent years looking for her younger sister, she didn’t know she had an older brother until 2024
- “I thought it was a scam,” she said of first learning the news
After nearly 80 years apart, a woman has reconnected with the brother she never knew she had.
Shortly after Marian Griffin was born in 1945, she was placed in foster care and then adopted by a Lutheran minister and his family, she told ABC News.
It wasn’t until July 2024 that Griffin learned that she had an older brother, Donald Hefke, who was still alive and had been searching for her for most of his life.
“I thought it was a scam,” Griffin, now 80, told the outlet of the life-altering news she learned from Hefke’s daughter, Denise Baker, who has also spent decades trying to find her long-lost relative.
Hefke is a year older than Griffin, but they were both babies when they were placed into foster care in 1946. Their biological mother suffered from post traumatic stress disorder following Griffin’s birth, and was institutionalized, while their biological father was unable to care for them, according to ABC News. Another sibling, their brother Ernest, was born deaf and has since died.
Hefke, now 81, was raised by a foster family until he joined the U.S. Air Force. In 1963, wanting to learn more about his biological family, he requested information from the foster care agency and learned that he had a sister named Marian, according to the outlet.
But his attempts to connect with his younger sister were thwarted by her adoptive parents, who hid his letters, according to ABC News.
“Our kids could have grown up together, instead we were separated because my parents would not tell me that my brother wrote to me and was looking for me,” Griffin told the outlet.
Baker later continued her father’s investigative work, searching for two decades for her missing aunt — but it wasn’t until she discovered a family connection online, which had been uploaded by Griffin’s son, that she found the person she was looking for.
“I still can’t believe he found me,” Griffin said.
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Once Griffin confirmed the connection was real, she spoke with Hefke on the phone.
“He says.. ‘Mariane, Mariane is that you? Oh my goodness, I’ve been looking for you Mariane!’ ” she recalled in an interview with ABC affiliate KRCR-TV. “He couldn’t even stop saying my name.”
While Hefke can’t travel from his home in Florida because of his health, Baker visited Griffin in California in his stead, according to ABC News. Now, Griffin plans on making a trip to see her long-lost sibling.
“Oh my gosh it would be wonderful even for a few days,” she told KRCR. “We have 80 years to catch up on.”
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