Four families torn apart by Chile’s illegal adoption scandal finally found each other decades later. They describe the emotional moment they met – and how they pieced together the lives they had spent apart
For Sara Melgarejo, the wait at Santiago airport was agonising. The 65-year-old had travelled about 30km north from San Bernardo, a working-class suburb of the Chilean capital, for the reunion. She walked the length of the building trying to calm her nerves, holding her breath for the arrival of the two children she had spent the last 40 years believing were dead. “My heart was racing and my body was trembling,” she says, “but I felt pure joy.”
Siblings Sean Ours, 40, and Emily Reid, 39, walked into arrivals together, having arrived on a flight from the US. Even though they had never met Sara in person, there was no question that she was their biological mother – they share the same eyes, the same infectious smile.
