Global Registry helps reveal hidden heritage

Adopted at birth, Bay Area residents Julia Sudbury, Alfia delVecchio and Deborah Schwarz searched years later for their biological parents; and found them.

But more than a new family; the three women say they found answers to basic questions about themselves that they'd had since childhood.

Oakland resident Thomas Kusch knows what they mean. And today he starts a search of his own. Adopted three weeks after birth, the 25-year-old college student wondered during his teen years what his biological parents looked like. Whose hair did he have? Why did he have blue-green eyes, this type of nose and face2 What was his family's medical history and heritage?

"You know who you are in one sense, but, an internal true you, you can't really answer who that is," said Kusch, married in August and expecting a child with his new wife.

'I don't know what my true nationality is," he said. "You learn to live with it as an adult, but when you have a child and become a role model, you want to have more concrete answers about your lineage. and genealogy for yourself and your child.

"Those are basic questions everybody needs to have answered to be a content and complete person."

Helping Kusch and the other estimated 6 million American adoptees is an international nonprofit registry that matches relatives separated by divorce, adoption or other circumstances. It works only if family members are registered.

Today Kusch will be one of thousands of people expected to register with the International Soundex Reunion Registry as part of the second annual International Search Registration Day.

Organized by the Bay Area Adoption Registration Coalition: "Reg Day" takes place at seven locations from Sacramento to San Jose. It is being held in conjunction with National Adoption Month that started Nov: 1. The event is held to promote the free international registry. Kusch also will join Sudbury a Berkeley resident, as one of several volunteers helping people register from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. today at Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley.

Schwarz, 36, lives in Francisco and found her biological parents thli year. She will be helping at the San Francisco location.

A San Rafael resident, delVecchio; 32, is co-founder of Bastard Nation, and won't be able to help at the San Rafael location but urged anyone who wants to be reunited with a family member to register.

(Note: This is baloney - delVecchio was there all day long from noon til 8 pm. )

Bastard Nation, formed six months ago, is an online activist and support group that empowers adoptees though humor, truth and activism that includes pushing for adoption law reforms, she said.

"The International Soundex Reunion Registry is the oldest registry in the world for mutual reunions," said delVecchio, whose biological parents attended her wedding.

"It's the largest and it's absolutely free", she said. You can have the most minimal information, and they can match people based on just a few minor things."

Yet, too few people know about the registry; a valuable search tool for adoptees searching for their true identities, said Sudbury, who started a support group for adoptees whose race differs from that of their adopted parents.

Born in Scotland and reared in England, Sudbury, 29, met her biological father, a Nigerian, for the first time a year ago, eight years after meeting her biological mother, who is English.Because she lived in England, which has open records laws, her search was easier than those of delVecchio and Schwarz, who were hindered by adoption agencies keeping information from them under U.S. government laws.

And that, Sudbury said, is ethically and morally wrong.

"I can't think of any other situation where a person doesn't have a right to their own identity", she said. "The registry doesn't change the law or break it. It circumvents it. Adoptees who have a right to know who they are and to search for their families."