Adopted Romanian siblings separated for decades reunited in Toronto thanks to DNA test
CBC
Dacina Crasnanic and Traian Alexandru had never met before they independently took 23andMe DNA tests in recent years hoping to learn more about their family health histories.
Instead, they got the surprise of a lifetime: the results revealed they are long-lost siblings.
The pair, who are both in their 50s, coincidentally live less than a 30-minute drive away from each other despite both hailing from Eastern Europe.
Alexandru, who lives in Toronto, said the fact that they are both in the same country added surprise to the unexpected revelation that he had a sister.
"This is crazy. I mean, why Canada? I could be in England. I could be in Germany. I could be in Spain. I am a European citizen. I could be everywhere, but I'm here," he told CBC Metro Morning's Ismaila Alfa in an interview airing on Family Day.
Alexandru messaged Crasnanic, who lives in Markham just north of Toronto, on social media on Christmas Eve in 2021 shortly after getting his results.
They met for the first time a few days later, and have since tried to make up for the decades they spent apart, unaware of each other's existence.
"At the beginning, it seemed very unreal," said Crasnanic. "I knew it was real, but I still couldn't believe it."
The more they spoke about their pasts, their life stories sounded the same.
Crasnanic told CBC she was adopted shortly after the director of a Romanian orphanage found her abandoned as a baby in the bushes outside the building. But she only learned she was adopted when she was in her early 20s after discovering a discrepancy on her birth certificate.
She moved to Canada with her husband in the 1990s to raise their children.
Alexandru was also an adult when his mother told him for the first time that he was adopted after someone abandoned him as an infant.
"Someone from the army was on his way to work and he saw something," said Alexandru. "I was ... close to the garbage chute, outdoors."
The solider who discovered Alexandru brought him to the police station and his mother, whose brother was a captain with the local police, took him in, he said.
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