Sisters meet for the first time in Albuquerque
A tight embrace is met with tears between Velvet Hernandez and her sister Tani Skinner, KOAT reports. This is the first time these two sisters have ever met.
"It was really a miracle that I was able to find them," Skinner said.
Hernandez and her sister Donna Franco shared box of their mother's belongings: a mother Skinner never knew. Both sisters knew they had an older sister that they always wanted to find but never could.
That all changed last month when Skinner was able to track Hernandez down on Facebook after she began researching her biological family tree and opened her adoption records in August. "A lady tried to friend me on Facebook and I just thought she was a friend of a friend, so I just ignored it. And then on November 14 she sent me an instant message and that she was Patricia Ward's daughter, and I was like, 'What's your dad's name, what's your birthday?'" Hernandez said.
"We had mom and you didn't," one of the sisters cried.
The sisters began exchanging family photos and information online and found out Skinner lived in Albuquerque most of her life. Finally agreeing to meet each other for the first time, the day after Christmas at the Sunport. "It was wonderful. It was like a piece of my mom came back," said Franco: A missing piece, this family says, had made them feel whole again.
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