Utah Woman Finds Apparent Birth Mother Through Viral Facebook Post
A Utah woman found her apparent birth mother three days after her Facebook appeal went viral.
On Sunday, Jenessa Simons, 21, posted a picture of herself holding her birth information.
She was born at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center in Provo on Nov. 17, 1991. Her parents were both 16. They named her Whitney. With that little bit of information and the hope that someone may recognize her, Simons asked her friends to share it.
They did just that - more than 124,000 times.
The story caught the eye of a woman who attended high school with who she believed were Simons' birth parents. She passed on the information to the apparent Simons' birth mother, who then sent her a message.
Simons was skeptical at first, she said, but after talking to the woman, she knew she had found the one.
"She sent pictures of me as a baby that my mother had given her," Simons told ABC News affiliate KTVX-TV.
Her apparent birth mother also provided her with information about her purported birth father, Simons wrote on Facebook.
She hopes to learn more about the woman she believes is her birth mother and possibly meet her, she said. In the meantime, she's also looking for her birth father.
As for the whirlwind of the past few days, Simons now hopes to pass on her good fortune to someone else in her situation.
"This page has gone crazy and I would love to turn it into a resource for others to help find birth parents," she wrote.