Adopted in secrecy: With help from TMCC’s Open Genealogy Lab, Randall Lorenz learned his true birth story—and finally met his biological family 

Randall Lorenz is an Air Force veteran from Chicago who has lived in Reno since 1993. In 2016, he had a heart attack that led to triple-bypass surgery. The following year, he decided to take a 23andMe DNA test through the Healthy Nevada Project to learn about any other diseases and health risks to which he might be genetically predisposed. 

Lorenz’s father died of leukemia in 1970. His mother suffered from multiple sclerosis, and, he said, “all of the family members I grew up with were dead and gone by 1980”—so he was baffled when his results showed no indications of the illnesses that had afflicted his family. The report ran counter to everything Lorenz thought he knew about himself.  

This led him to discover, at the age of 66, that the parents he grew up with were not his biological parents. He had been adopted. 

“That report was not me,” Lorenz said. “It said I was Croatian, Slovenian and Scottish. But my father was German; he fled from Germany, and my mother was from England, and they met in Chicago.”  

The surnames in his DNA report—Cvetan, Taylor, Raitt, Starkweather, Ragan and Ensign—did not match what he believed to be his family’s surnames, either, which were Lorenz, Brown, Mosley and Fellens. The information in Lorenz’s DNA report upended his life, and he fell into a depression.  

“I became very suicidal at that point, because I didn’t understand anything,” he said. “And there was nobody around. I was completely on my own.” 

Librarian to the rescue 

Lorenz was attending Truckee Meadows Community College at the time, which led him to meet exactly the right person—TMCC research librarian Suzanne Malek, who had just begun building the school’s genealogy library, and had started teaching a genealogy class on Fridays that was open to the public. Lorenz joined the class and began working with Malek to uncover clues about his perplexing genealogy. 

Malek’s own interest in genealogy began after her mother’s passing. She realized she had no one left to ask about her family’s history, as her father had already died. She joined genealogy groups and spent her days off at various genealogy libraries in Southern California. 

“The further you go back in time, the less open families were about so-called family secrets, whether it’s an adoption or an out-of-wedlock birth.” Suzanne Malek, research librarian, Truckee Meadows Community College 

When Malek moved to Reno eight years ago, she was surprised to find no local genealogy groups or a dedicated library. When she started working at TMCC, the library director challenged the staff to come up with ways to increase traffic to the library on Fridays. After Malek proposed the genealogy library and class, the director supported the idea and provided her with a bit of seed money. 

At first, Malek’s class, the TMCC Open Genealogy Lab, drew only five or six attendees, but it grew over time, eventually outgrowing the small classroom in which it was held. The library offered Malek a much larger space upstairs with 50 computer stations to accommodate the increasing demand. 

When the pandemic hit, Malek, of course, had to move the class online. The class has remained on Zoom, because it is accessible to many more participants there.  

“Anyone with an internet connection can join,” Malek said. “I’ve had people from Canada, Florida, Wisconsin—all over.”  

She began recording her Zoom sessions and posting them on YouTube, where she has 137 weeks of classes available for anyone to watch. 

“When Randall came to me seven years ago, he wanted to know why his DNA results didn’t match his reality,” Malek said. “We soon discovered his parents weren’t his biological parents, which opened the possibility he had been adopted. It became a class project to find his birth parents.” 

Finding his family 

In early November 2017, Lorenz got a match on Ancestry.com with a 28-year-old woman named Jerica Starkweather from Boise, Idaho. He found her phone number and gave her a call. 

“Imagine being 28 and getting a call from a 66-year-old stranger saying, ‘I want to know how we’re related; I want to meet you,’” Lorenz said. “She wasn’t very receptive. She said, ‘Who the hell are you, and what makes you think we’re related?’” Lorenz explained, “Twenty-four hours ago, I didn’t know about you, and three hours ago, I found out we’re related. I’d really like to know how.” 

Though skeptical, Jerica called him back after checking Ancestry.com herself. “Who the hell are you?” Lorenz remembered her asking again. “I have a closer relationship with you than most of my own family!” 

Later, Lorenz spoke to Jerica’s mother, Valerie Starkweather, who was equally distrustful. When Lorenz discovered a mitochondrial connection with a woman named Margaret Klenk, he asked Valerie, “Who is Margaret?” Lorenz said there was silence before Valerie responded: “That’s my mother’s sister.”  

Lorenz told Valerie they could have the same mother. “There’s no way,” she said. 

After their call, Valerie ordered seven Ancestry.com DNA tests for her family. The day after Christmas, Lorenz saw the results: He was closely related to Valerie’s family. The last test showed Valerie shared more than 1,900 centimorgans (a unit for measuring genetic linkage) with him—she was indeed his biological sister. 

Lorenz soon traveled to Boise to meet Jerica. “That was the first time I met anyone I was actually related to,” he said. “When my niece walked in, we just looked at each other, embraced, and talked about everything.”  

He remembered Jerica telling her mother: “Grandma is here. He talks like her; he walks like her; he breathes like her. Everything he does is identical to Grandma.” 

A few months later, Lorenz flew to Tampa, Fla., to meet his sister, Valerie, for the first time. “She was in shock,” he said. “I looked and acted just like her mother.” 

Valerie’s mother, Agnes (Cvetan) Hansen, agreed to take a DNA test a few months later, and it confirmed she was Lorenz’s biological mother. Valerie told Lorenz he needed to go meet her. Hansen was 89 years old at the time and was living in a senior home in Sandy, Utah. Almost immediately, Lorenz drove to Utah with his wife, Linda. “My sister, who was very adamant about me meeting my mother, had things arranged,” he said. 

Valerie’s son, Arion—who was in the apartment with his grandmother when Lorenz and Linda arrived to help facilitate the meeting—answered the door. When he stepped aside, Lorenz saw his biological mother for the first time. He introduced himself and said, “I sent you a letter a couple months ago. I know we’re related, and I’d like to know more.” 

Hansen agreed to talk with Lorenz, Linda and Arion outside of her apartment in the family meeting area.  

“We sat down, and it was very light, nothing serious; I couldn’t get anything out of her,” Lorenz said. To give Lorenz and his mother a moment alone, Linda said she needed a drink of water, and Arion escorted her to the apartment. As soon as they were out of earshot, Hansen admitted that she was Lorenz’s biological mother—he was her first born, and she had been forced to give him up for adoption. She told him his father was a truck driver from Chicago named Russell Emerson Taylor who she’d been dating for a short while before unexpectedly getting pregnant. 

Before Arion and Linda came back, Lorenz quickly told his mother, “Agnes, I really appreciate this. I really wanted to know the truth. Thank you. I promise I will never call you again. You don’t have to worry about me. I’m just grateful for being able to meet you.”  

Tears welled up in Hansen’s eyes and she said, “I had to give you up once. I never want to lose you again,” Lorenz recalled. 

After their first meeting, Lorenz talked to his mother on a weekly basis. He got to see her six more times and celebrated her 90th birthday with her before she passed away.  

“It was wonderful,” he said. “She died knowing that I love her.” 

Illegal adoptions proliferated 

Because Lorenz’s mother had gotten pregnant out of wedlock, her seven brothers and sisters forced her to give him up in what he said was “a gray-market adoption”—a private adoption arranged outside of the legal adoption process. From his original birth certificate, Lorenz discovered he was born at SouthTown Hospital in Chicago, which he said was a facility for unwed mothers. 

Gray-market adoptions were big business in the early and mid-20th century. Notable cases include Dr. Thomas Hicks in Georgia, who illegally sold more than 200 babies in the 1950s and ’60s. Hicks often sold the babies of unwed, pregnant women to couples who wanted children. A three-part documentary series on Hicks called Taken at Birth is available on Hulu and Apple TV+. Another participant in the illegal adoption industry was Georgia Tann, a social worker who operated Tennessee Children’s Home Society, an orphanage which was a front for her adoption scheme in which she illegally sold more than 5,000 babies between 1920 and 1950. According to Lorenz, Tann successfully got the government to seal adoptees’ birth records.  

“I didn’t have the right to know anything about me thanks to her,” Lorenz said.  

Tann died of cancer while she was being investigated and was never brought to justice. Only 15 states currently allow adult adoptees the unrestricted right to access their original, pre-adoption birth records. Nevada is not among them. 

In November 2020, Lorenz was finally able to access his original birth certificate after filing a petition with the state of Illinois to open his sealed adoption file. The father’s name on his birth certificate was listed as “Burton Cvetan,” which Lorenz said was the name of his mother’s brother, who had died shortly after she became pregnant.  

“She didn’t want to give out the father’s name, so that was the name she gave, and nobody questioned it,” he said. 

Advocating for adoptees 

Since finding out the truth, Lorenz has made advocating for his fellow adoptees one of his life goals. He is adamant that adoptees should know as early as possible that they are adopted.  

“They need to know who their biological family is,” he said. “They need to know everything.” 

Through support groups such as Fireside Adoptees, Lorenz has met many other adoptees. “They’re in such pain,” he said. “And their stories are almost identical to mine.”  

Adoptees can carry trauma and stress stemming from their adoptions throughout their lives. Lorenz himself currently suffers from insomnia that he believes is induced by his post-traumatic stress as an adoptee. 

Malek attested to Lorenz’s advocacy for adoptees. “He’s become an incredible advocate for adopted children’s rights—whether they be children or whether they be adults,” she said. “… He’s now a counselor for several different local and international online adoption groups.” 

Lorenz is working to get legislation passed in Nevada that would give adoptees access to their records. “I’ve already gone down to talk to our Legislature (previously). I’m getting things together, and I will be going down and meeting with the legislators again this session,” he said. 

Not your grandmother’s genealogy 

Malek’s weekly TMCC Open Genealogy Lab class on Zoom has blossomed into a supportive, thriving community of genealogists. Malek would like more locals to use the library’s wealth of genealogy resources.  

“We have so many services here for it,” she said. “I offer free one-on-one consultations online, run my Friday class, and provide access to an entire genealogy collection upstairs. We also have public databases and an email list anyone can join. I send out invitations for my class every week.” 

“It’s not your grandma’s genealogy anymore. In the past, your great aunt or grandma had to write letters to archives on the East Coast and wait for responses. Now, with AI, DNA testing and online databases, finding family history records is much simpler. It just takes dedication.” Suzanne Malek, research librarian, Truckee Meadows Community College 

Genealogy is easier than ever, thanks to technological advances. DNA testing through companies like 23andMe and Ancestry.com have made it much easier for people to identify relatives and find potential genetic matches in large DNA databases. 

“It’s not your grandma’s genealogy anymore,” Malek said. “In the past, your great aunt or grandma had to write letters to archives on the East Coast and wait for responses. Now, with AI, DNA testing and online databases, finding family history records is much simpler. It just takes dedication.” 

Malek said it’s common for people in her class to learn something unexpected about themselves while researching their family histories. 

“I’ve had people who found out that their grandparents were not their grandparents, and there are a lot of adoptions,” she said. “The further you go back in time, the less open families were about so-called family secrets, whether it’s an adoption or an out-of-wedlock birth.” 

Genealogy is like a game of “Telephone,” Malek said, citing research showing that by the third generation, family stories become so distorted that they no longer resemble reality.  

“If you don’t record your family history, those stories will be gone in three generations,” she said.  

She urges everyone to research and preserve their family histories. “Everyone has a living library within themselves—a lifetime of memories. Whether you’re 19 or 90, those memories are lost when that person dies. I encourage people to either write a book, create an e-book or upload their research to an online database.” 

Malek advises starting your family history work as soon as possible. “Many say they’ll do it when they retire. No, do it now. Even 10 minutes a day is enough to begin.” 

To Lorenz, Malek’s work has been a lifeline. 

“Suzanne saved my life,” he said, “I was suicidal, and she didn’t know. I was one of the first people to join her class, and I’ve been there every week since. I promote it all the time, because it’s such an incredible resource—and it’s all free.” 

For more information about the TMCC Open Genealogy Lab, visit TMCC’s Genealogy and Family History page.