Accidental sleuth helps reunite families
Woodstock-raised woman has solved more than 300 cases over the years
“Fifty-one years is a long time to wonder if your child is OK.” Synda Lockyer recently was reunited with her biological son, and joined hundreds of people brought together by a Woodstock-raised woman known as an “adoption search angel” for reuniting families separated by adoptions. Sitting across from her son at a London restaurant, the Ipperwash resident said the reunion with Jim Winegarden, 51, occurred after a series of coincidences laid a trail to the London man.
At age 17, under pressure from her parents, Lockyer said she gave up her son for adoption in 1966. “It was horrible. I cried for two weeks,” Lockyer said. “I thought about him every day.
“I was hoping he was in a good home and being raised properly.” As it turned out, Winegarden grew up in Grand Bend, just 15 minutes away from his biological mom, and had often spent time on the beach near her home. Meanwhile, in Ipperwash, Lockyer went on to marry Winegarden’s biological father and had two more children, siblings to Winegarden.
While Lockyer had searched unsuccessfully for her son during the years, her search intensified after she was widowed and was advised by a psychic last summer to search out her lost son. Meanwhile, Winegarden, who had harboured some “anger” over his adoption, also recently had started to look for his mother.
“I always wanted to find out the big question, why?” Winegarden said.
Hours after hearing what the psychic said, Lockyer confided in a girlfriend, who happened to have a friend who could help. Enter Colleen O’Grady-Johnson, who works as a Cambridge teacher by day but is known as an adoption search angel.
Over the years, O’Grady-Johnson, who grew up in Woodstock and graduated from Western University, has solved more than 300 cases, many in the London area, where family members were otherwise unsuccessful at finding each other.
“I help birth parents locate the child they gave up for adoption, and adoptees locate their birth families,” O’Grady-Johnson said. “I not only search for and locate family members, I facilitate reunions by helping both parties through the process of reuniting.” O’Grady-Johnson went to work to find Winegarden, helping Lockyer fill out government paperwork to enable her to first determine her long-lost son’s name.
Once they learned his name, O’Grady-Johnson narrowed her search down to five people, after blasting out 75 messages on social media.
On Aug. 6, O’Grady-Johnson was sitting at an Indigo bookstore with her laptop when a reply to one of those social media blasts came from a woman who knew Winegarden.
“He has been searching for his birth mom for quite some time but has had no luck,” the message read. “Your timing is perfect!” Soon after, Lockyer and Winegarden — mother and son, separated for decades — had an emotional meeting at her home in Ipperwash. “The buildup was intense,” said Winegarden, who was eager to learn why his mother had given him up.
Said Lockyer: “I told him I had no choice and that I was still in school and my parents said there was no way I could keep him.” Winegarden, who said the revelation made him “sad,” told his mother he had “a good life” with “excellent” parents, but later struggled with addiction issues. Now, months later, they are working through their relationship with daily texts and are coordinating future plans. “We’re comfortable with each other,” Lockyer said.
Both are grateful to O’GradyJohnson for bringing them together.
“Colleen was there with me all the way,” Lockyer said. “She’s an angel, no doubt about that.” World Adoption Day, Nov. 9, is meaningful to O’Grady-Johnson. “It began five years ago as a movement of birth mothers, adoptees, adoptive parents and those who have been touched by adoption,” she said. “This is a day to celebrate the children, parents, mothers, fathers and brave ones we call family.” O’Grady-Johnson said she fell into her hobby — she charges little or nothing to conduct the searches — after a friend asked her to help search for his father.
“I like to mend relationships and provide peace and closure to people,” she said. “I believe adoptees have a moral right to know their origins. I feel it is unjust that the circumstances around their adoption remain a secret. I also believe that, in most cases, biological parents should be allowed an opportunity to know the identity of the child they gave up.”
But not everyone will get their happy ending.
“Every one of my clients dreams of a happy ending, but this doesn’t always happen. A reunion — even the possibility of a reunion — brings on a multitude of unexpected emotions,” she said. “I try to prepare my clients for any result.”