Calista’s search

*All names have been changed

Search goal: Identify Calista’s biological father

Calista reached out for help with identifying her biological father. She was donor conceived and looking for some health information on her paternal side of her family. Calista had some information about her donor from the clinic as well as AncestryDNA test results.

Calista invited me to her DNA results, sent me the donor information paperowork, and I got started.

I was immediately surprised with the lack of paternal matches Calista had, with only one paternal match above 45cm. After reading Calista’s parents and learning the donor’s ethnic background, this made a little more sense, but I wondered how I was going to be able to put it together with such few matches to work with.

Fortunately, the one match above 45cm was in the first cousin once removed range, around 350cm. The match, who was a lady named Daphne, had a small tree that had her parents and grandparents on both sides, but that was it. After a little research, it turned out that Daphne was now living in the city Calista was born in.

After reading Calista’s paperwork, I found that the most important information was the ages of the donor’s grandparents when they died. I noted these ages down and then looked at Daphne’s tree, and noted the ages of *her* grandparents when they died. It turned out that Daphne’s maternal grandparents’ ages when they died were the exact same as the donor’s: I figured Daphne was likely first cousins with the donor.

I could not find any further information about Daphne’s family online, which made sense given they were such recent arrivals to Canada. I suggested Calista reach out to Daphne to see if she could assist and confirm if she had any male cousins that fit the information she had.

Once again, luck was on our side and Daphne responded quickly and helpfully, confirming that one of her maternal first cousins was the donor. She was able to share some family information and health information with Calista. Calista is glad to know more about her paternal origins and looks forward to learning more in the future.