81-year-old meets long lost siblings in Detroit thanks to DNA kit

DETROIT (FOX 2) - There's a lot of chance in this story, like that fact we happened to be at a coney island in Detroit for a family get together that just happened to be 81 years in the making.

DNA helped Jim Walters and Alan Miller find out they are full biological brothers.

"I was adopted; my adopted family was very good to me. I didn't look up my birth family, and then my daughter went on Ancestry.com this year and found my birth family," Alan Miller told us. "They immediately embraced me, included me in all their events, like tonight. They've been wonderful to me, I am so blessed."

Alan's birth parents fell in love, left Pennsylvania in the late '40s and eloped in Detroit. No one knew they had a baby together before welcoming four more children, including Alan's birth sister Wendy.

"They gave up the baby, because it was in the '30s during The Depression, and never told anybody," Wendy told us. "We could piece different things that happened throughout our lives, like some strange things. So, but we're glad we found each other."

"We found that out, since one of my nephews Jesse spit in a bottle," says brother Jim Walters. "They wrote a song about it, there's a short video movie and all that, it's pretty interesting. It's so sweet."

Turns out the cousin Jesse never knew he had, Gigi, had also spit into a tube and sent it to Ancestry.com, then reached out to him. 

"And I'm like, 'Mom, who's Gigi Miller?' And she's like, 'Gigi Miller? I don't know, I have no idea,'" Jesse said. 

Here's what Gigi wrote Jesse: "According to Ancestry we might even be first cousins. This is within the realm of possibilities, because my dad was adopted in 1938 and he does not know who his birth family is."

At the end Gigi continued, "Either way, welcome to the family! If we really are cousins, you have a number of cousins you haven't yet met."

Then, the meeting happened.

All kinds of relations came together, and all kinds of things were revealed.

"I knew [my biological] parents had to be pretty darn good, and they turned out to be really great. I can see all the things I feel in common with Jim. Jim, a big Tigers fan; I've been a Tigers fan since 1946, I've seen a game every single year since 1946. Even though they were in last place in '52, they're in last place now," Alan laughs. 

"My life has been very, very good. All the time here and the years since and now, better than ever with this wonderful family."

Gigi, Alan's daughter, says this mose recent family get together in Detroit was like coming home for him. This was the first time ever he got to enjoy a Tigers game with his whole family.