Amy Penland Damera and Katalina Jones grew up about 20 minutes apart in Northeast Georgia.
They share some of the same friends. Jones attended the same high school where Damera’s father, Jerry, was a teacher. They both like Hawaiian pizza and the color blue.
Still, the two had never met.
Damera, 26, and Jones, 32, though, recently found out they have even more in common.
They are half-sisters, born more than 5,300 miles away in Romania, raised in separate orphanages and adopted by different families in the same state.
“I was so shocked,” said Damera, who lives in Cleveland. “Tears came to my eyes because it was so hard to fathom. In the back of my head, I thought, ‘I could have had a relationship with her a long time ago.’”
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Now they are making up for lost time. They have seen each other at least once a week since that April discovery. They swap stories about their children (each has two), and they pore over grainy childhood photos.
It was a circuitous route to that first face-to-face meeting in the parking lot of the El Maguey Mexican restaurant in Gainesville, where they hugged and cried until they started to draw stares from passers-by.
Both women knew they were adopted. Damera’s adoptive parents, Jeannie and Jerry Penland, had saved a handwritten letter — dated April 1991 — from her birth mother. The letter is written in Romanian, French and English, leading both women to think she had someone write it for her. In it, their birth mother said she hopes her daughter is doing well, wishes her a happy holiday (it was around Easter) and asks Damera to keep her in her thoughts. It also mentioned a brother, Lucian.
In fact, Damera also knew of another sister, Sarah Hanna, who was raised in Georgia and now lives in Texas, because their adoptive families knew each other and they were adopted around the same time.
Jones, who was adopted when she was 12 and carries traces of a Romanian accent, didn’t have such a letter, but she did have something else — a photograph of their mother.
“It’s was surreal,” said Jones, who lives in Jackson County. “It was unbelievable. At first, I needed proof. I got that proof when she showed me a picture she had of my mom. I was kind of scared. Really nervous, not knowing how she is or her personality.”
For Damera, the search began in April. She and her husband, Jared, went to the movies to see “Lion,” the Oscar-nominated film about a young Indian boy who gets separated from his family and is eventually adopted by an Australian couple. The film traces his journey as he returns to India to find his birth family.
The storyline so moved both of them that when they returned home, Jared immediately jumped on social media to try to find his wife’s Romanian family. He discovered a Facebook page called “the Never Forgotten Romanian Children,” which was started in 2015 by Ileana Cunniffe Baiescu to help reunite Romanian families.
Damera sent her information she knew about her family, and the next day there was a match. They had found a brother, Lucian Sarkadi. She sent him a friend request on Facebook.
Sarkadi, who was living with their birth mother, had also been searching for his brothers and sisters. It is believed that all but one were raised in orphanages when their mother was no longer able to take care of them. He did a Facebook video chat with their mother.
“There was just this connection when I saw her face for the first time,” Damera said. “It was definitely emotional. She just had this smile on her face. I looked at her and knew she was family.”
They immediately peppered each other with questions. Was Damera’s life good in the United States? Damera wanted to know what was her mother’s favorite holiday. She told her about Hanna. She wondered if they all had the same father.
Before long, Damera found out that she also had several other siblings, most of whom still lived in Romania.
Sarkadi, 28, who works in a supermarket in Cluj-Napoca, told her that he knew one sister who lived in the same state. And that was Jones, who had already been in touch with her family in Romania.
She was floored.
“Yes, there is great emotion here in Romania,” said Sarkadi, who also learned about Hanna. “Also a great joy received from God.”
This wasn’t the first time, however, Damera had tried to find her birth family.
When she was in high school, she tried to go online and search for her birth mother on social media. She knew someone in Romania and asked if they would go by the address on the faded envelope from the letter. No one was there.
“I started thinking this was a dead end,” said Damera. “I stopped. I thought I’m not meant to find her right now.”
In 1990, ABC News' "20/20" reported on the deplorable conditions of many of Romania's orphanages during the reign of dictator Nicolae Ceausescu, who was overthrown the previous year.
Many children languished in overcrowded, dirty orphanages without proper socialization, enough food and clothing and little — if any — schooling. (Damera, Jones and Hanna fared better than most.) There was a rush of U.S. and Western European families willing to adopt.
Now, the sisters, with Damera's husband, are planning a trip to meet their Romanian family. A GoFundMe account has been started to help the sisters pay for a trip to reunite with their birth family in Romania. So far (as of Monday morning), $1,235 has been raised on a goal of $8,000.
“I want to see this to the end,” Damera said.
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