Reunited brothers search for lost sister
Paul Hopkinson was told that he had no siblings. When he found out by sheer luck, at age 57, that he had a brother, he found out he also had a sister, too.
Now the reconnected brothers have a strong lead that the sister they never knew, Olivia Rose, may have spent many years in Blenheim.
But she was last known to be in the region in 2015.
Hopkinson’s daughter, Auckland woman Bianca Howlett, put the word out on Facebook this week, on behalf of her father and uncle in Australia, in the hope that someone might know Olivia Rose.
Howlett said the family believed Rose was born in Rotorua in 1949, making her about 70 now.
‘‘Olivia Rose we believe is a first and surname [but] we don’t think that it was her birth name, and possibly not her adopted name either,’’ she said.
Howlett has been helping her father since May last year to find his birth family. Hopkinson lives in Frankland River, Western Australia.
While he had made contact with his birth mother before her death in 2005, Howlett said, his mother wanted no contact with Hopkinson’s father, and told him he had no siblings.
But a search of the mother’s name on an ancestry website showed that someone else had dug into the mother’s family tree. That person turned out to be Hopkinson’s brother, John Lee, who also lived in Australia.
Several weeks later, Hopkinson flew from Perth to Bundaberg, Queensland to meet Lee in person.
A DNA test confirmed that they were brothers, Howlett said.
Howlett said it was ‘‘such a special moment’’ to have the brothers reunited.
‘‘[Their mother] didn’t want a relationship, and so she stopped them having a relationship for all this time,’’ she said.
‘‘And they’re really close now. They talk every couple of days, and we’re all on social media messaging each other.’’
With Lee came the knowledge of a third sibling, a sister, believed to live in New Zealand.
‘‘John had been researching it before we had linked up with him, and family members had told him he had a sister,’’ Howlett said.
With photos surfacing of Olivia Rose from the family, Howlett shared them on Facebook to help with the search for the missing sister, who he and Lee believe then lived in Nelson.
They also believe that Rose made contact with their birth mother before her death, so may have also been told she had no siblings.
On Wednesday, a former Blenheim resident who had worked at a bank contacted Howlett to say that she recognised the photo and had known Rose in Blenheim.
‘‘She said five years ago, she lived in Blenheim. She knew Olivia Rose, she was a client of hers, and she was living in Blenheim,’’ Howlett said.
‘‘She recognised her from the photos – she’s definitely around the same age.’’
Howlett’s father and uncle are asking for anyone with information about their missing sister to contact them.
‘‘[Their mother] didn’t want a relationship, and so she stopped them having a relationship for all this time.’’
Do you know Olivia Rose? Email biancajhowlett@gmail.com, or sophie.trigger@stuff.co.nz, and information can be passed on.