Orphans end up in same job, 40 years after parting

MIAMI: Two orphaned South Korean sisters were recently reunited by chance in Florida after they were hired by the same hospital 40 years after their adoptions by different sets of American parents, local media reported.

Holly Hoyle O’Brien, 46, and her half-sister, Meaghan Hughes, 44, were orphaned in their native Pusan, South Korea, in the mid-1970s when their father, an alcoholic, was hit by a train, the sisters told the paper.

Neither can recall their mothers.

Hughes – whose birth name is Eun-Sook Shin – was adopted first in 1976 and grew up in Kingston, New York.

O’Brien, or Pok-nam Shin, was adopted two years later and went to live barely 480km away in Alexandria, Virginia. Haunted by thoughts of her biological sister, she contacted the orphanage in South Korea years later but could find no records of Hughes.

Their chances of reuniting got a boost this year when both were hired just months apart at Doctors Hospital in Sarasota. Hughes had been living in the area since 1981 after her family moved there. O’Brien arrived in Sarasota in 2005.

The sisters met working the same shift, and quickly found they had unusual similarities. They ordered DNA kits and the lab results came back positive on August 17.

They say they never imagined working in the same profession, let alone the same hospital.

“But I’m glad I joined in this field instead of something else,” O’Brien said, laughing. – Reuters