Community Corner
Orphaned Korean Sisters Reunited at Sarasota Hospital
Separated since the 1970s, the two were brought back after they both landed jobs at the same hospital.
When Holly Holye O’Brien and Meagan Hughes began working at Doctors Hospital of Sarasota within two months of each other something drew the two together.
Whether it was coincidence or the hands of fate matters little to the two women. What they now know for sure is that they are long-lost sisters, reunited after decades of being apart.
O’Brien and Hughes were placed in a Korean orphanage in the 1970s after the death of their father, the Sarasota Herald-Tribune reported. O’Brien was adopted by an American couple from Alexandria, Va., in 1978 at the age of 9. Hughes, the younger of the two sisters, was adopted by a family from Kingston, N.Y., in 1976.
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While the two grew up hundreds of miles apart, O’Brien never forgot about her little sister. Her insistence that she indeed had one was so strong, her adoptive mother reached out to the orphanage on her behalf. The orphanage, however, had no record of a biological sister, TBO reported.
“But, in my heart, I knew,” TBO quoted O’Brien as saying. “I knew she was out there somewhere.”
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O’Brien’s insistence paid off shortly after Hughes was hired by Doctors Hospital. A patient told O’Brien about a nurse at the hospital who happened to be from the same town in Korea and suggested the two talk.
That talk happened and many others after it as the two compared notes about their lives and the similarities they shared, the Herald-Tribune noted. An instant connection formed between the two and the more they spoke, the more they suspected they were siblings.
DNA tests performed over the summer confirmed the suspicion.
“I cannot believe that I finally found my sister,” O’Brien said in a video interview.
Hughes, too, is thrilled with the results.
“I’ve had constant questions in my mind,” she was quoted on the video as saying. “When that result came through that was my closure. I was so happy we got our answer for Holly and I.”
Photo of Meagan Hughes, left, and Holly Hoyle O’Brien courtesy of the Sarasota Herald-Tribune/Inform video
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