Incredible Chance Meeting Reunites Family

May 28, 2004 — -- When Ila Manner looked at the albums of her daughter, she would see an empty place that others couldn't see — it was the place in her heart where a son should have been, a son she'd lost for 34 years, kept secret except in her prayers. But now that emptiness has been filled in a way no one could have predicted.

"Every day in every one of our lives there are incredible miracles happening. And maybe we're just too human to see them," Manner said.

Manner was raised in Miami Beach, Fla., the youngest of four sisters. She grew up near the ocean, and by 14, she had met a surfer named Chris Maracic at a high school dance. The romance lasted three years until Maracic was drafted into the Army to fight in Vietnam. At the same time, Manner discovered she was pregnant. She was 17.

"We were both really just kids," she said. "But things like that just don't go away if you don't tell anybody.

Her parents decided it was best to keep the pregnancy a secret and admitted their daughter into one of the Florence Crittenton Homes for unwed mothers which cared for their patients until they gave birth, then arranged for the adoption of their children.

On Aug. 9, 1968, Ila gave birth to a baby boy after two days of labor that ended with Caesarean section. As she recovered in the Crittenton home, the only way she could see her son was through the glass of a hospital window.

"I would take my IV pole and go down to the nursery every chance I had. And I would look and stand there. But they wouldn't let me touch him," Manner said.

She felt powerless. Her only hope was to give a few precious clues so she might someday find him again. On the adoption form, she made up occupations for herself and Maracic — hairstylist and oceanographer.

"These were my crumbs in the forest," Manner said of the fictitious occupations, "to find him some day."

Her son was adopted three weeks after his birth, but she could never discover what had happened to him. Maracic returned from Vietnam and the two were married. A year later, they had a daughter they named Kari, but the marriage ended in divorce and Manner could not forget the son she had given up.

Something Was Incomplete

After the divorce, Ila and her daughter moved to Westchester, N.Y., where she established herself as a successful jewelry designer. Kari had been told she was an only child, but for some reason it never rang true.

"I always felt that there was something else … in my life that wasn't there … something was incomplete," Kari Maracic said.

At the same time, unknown to Kari, her brother Ben, six years older, was being raised in North Carolina by the couple who had adopted both him and a baby girl they named Margot. Ben Davis grew up knowing he'd been adopted, but not even his parents knew the identity of Ben's birth mother. They only knew the few scraps of information left on the birth records.

"While I was in high school I took a test to determine what I was going to be when I grew up," Ben said. "And one of the options that I was given was an oceanographer … And my dad's jaw dropped and he's like, 'That's remarkable because when we were adopting you we found out that your father was an oceanographer.'"

By the time Kari was 17, she was back in touch with her father and on one of her visits, he let the truth slip out.

Kari said she had "this feeling that I had to find him. Immediately. When could I find him? How was I going to find him?"

But part of the reason Kari's mother had never told the secret was to spare her daughter the years she had already spent trying to find her son. Florida adoption records are sealed by state law.

"I just didn't have the heart to totally tell her, 'Kari, this is never going to happen. I have tried, and I have pretty much given up,'" Maracic said.

But Kari would not give up. She called a private investigator, registered with adoption agencies, and searched the Internet every week. "I always imagined this person would somehow walk into my life … by accident," she said.The brother Kari so longed for was 3,000 miles away in San Francisco, working and going to school. He had once tried to find his birth family but hit the same roadblocks in Florida law. Ben Davis thought it was simply meant to happen that way.

"I always figured that for whatever reason that my … my birth family had given me up … it was a good reason and I didn't want to bother them," Ben said.

An Amazing Coincidence

Kari, meanwhile, had followed her mother into the jewelry business, and had established a career in New York City. Despite her success, she felt a restless urge to travel to, of all places, San Francisco.

"I finally just decided to just throw it all to the wind — pick up, move cross country where I knew two people. I had no place to go," Kari said.In San Francisco, Kari found a roommate named Erin Kehoe.

Kari started to meet some of Erin's friends, and last July at a nightspot called the Cat's Club, Erin introduced Kari to an old friend of hers, Ben Davis. Kari had no idea it was her brother.

Two weeks later, the girls invited Ben along to a casual dinner, and in the middle of the meal, Erin suddenly asked Kari a question that would change their lives. Ben was talking about his birthday party, which prompted Erin to ask Kari about her long-lost brother.

Kari told how she had looked for her brother for 11 years without luck. "Ben was sitting across from me nodding his head. And I looked at him and he was, 'Yeah. I know what you mean. You know, I was actually adopted from Florida.' And we all felt like, "Wow! What an amazing coincidence."And when it came around to Kari saying when her brother's birthday was, Ben said: "That's my birthday.""How could he be saying those words, which were the birth date that I knew was my brother's?" Kari said. "And I remember trying to discount it by saying, 'Well, my brother's Jewish so.' … And he said, 'I was adopted from a Jewish adoption agency.' And that's when stuff began to get really creepy."

‘Crumbs in the Forest’

Ben thought it was all a crazy series of coincidences. But Erin said she was in shock and told them: "God, you guys kind of look alike."

Kari first wondered if they did in fact look alike. Then she thought that Ben might be a "crazy person" who had somehow gotten her information from the Internet. She decided not to tell him anything else but to let him give her more information.

On the phone the next morning, Ben started to fill in the blanks. His birthplace and the name of the agency that had handled his adoption both confirmed Kari's research.

But there was one thing that Ben knew that Kari didn't. Ben said his adopted father told him that his adoption papers listed his birth mother and father's occupations: hair stylist and oceanographer.

"And I went, "Oh. Well,' I said, 'you know, my dad was a surfer,'" Kari said.

On the phone, Kari told her father what had happened. Chris Maracic got very quiet.

"I knew that Ila at that time was studying to be a hair stylist. And my plan at the time was to be an oceanographer," Maracic said.

Kari said her stomach turned over at that point. "I thought, Oh my God."

The way it happened, it was just like God calling," Maracic said.

Now the only one who didn't know the amazing news was Kari's mother, who had been away on a trip to Asia. With Ben at her side, Kari called her the night she returned.

"And I just said, 'Kari, if this doesn't have the outcome that I want, stop.' Because I can't take it," Manner said."She said, 'Mom, just wait.' And she said, 'Talk to your son. Your son is here. Say hello to your son.'"

Ben got on the phone and said hello. "And I heard my son's voice for the first time in my life," Manner said.

The children told her every detail of how fate had brought them together. If there had been any doubt in Manner's mind, it vanished when Ben told her the words written on his adoption papers.

Manner told Kari that she wrote the occupations. "That was my crumb in the forest. And even though everybody told me not to write that, I did it. I made up something. And I knew that that was my boy," she said.

Manner flew to San Francisco to meet her son.

‘I Love Them Both So’

At the airport, Manner told Ben: "I waited 34 years to touch you. I saw you in the nursery, and they wouldn't let me touch you."

"I walked up to him ever so slowly and I put out my hand. And I touched his face. And it was exquisite, to touch my baby," Manner said. By last New Year's, the whole family was together. DNA tests proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that Ben was Kari's brother. "I just know how bad I wanted it for so long," Kari said. "And how much I knew. I never once doubted, I always knew I was going to find him. Always."

Since their emotional reunion in August 2002, Ila and Chris, Ben's biological parents, have met the adoptive parents who raised Ben so well. Ben and his sister, Kari, see each other regularly in San Francisco.

Manner said she sees "remarkable" similarities between the two. "They both have the same kind of cars. They both love motorcycles. And they both have the same peculiar sense of humor, which is wonderful. … And I love them both so."

This story first appeared on ABCNEWS.com on May 3, 2003.