It was the draw of a candy store that caused a young girl to lose her family for almost 41 years. At just four years old, Mika Cheesman was in Penn Station with her mother when she became separated from her family and became lost with her mother nowhere to be found.
That was in 1975 and Mika has not seen her mother since. That is all set to change this coming September. Thanks to a professional investigation and advances in DNA technology, Mika Mika is finally coming home to her family.
Mika, now 47, sat down with Inside Edition to tell her story. She stated she had been in Penn Station with her mother, Barbara Wright, when Mika walked into a candy store. She walked back to be with her mother but could not find her.
It was then that she ran into a police officer and was placed in an orphanage. In 1977, after attempts to find her family failed, she was adopted. Unfortunately, she was sent to a less-than-happy home where she was subject to years of abuse.
Mika always wondered what happened to her family, but was provided very few answers. She told Inside Edition, “’I’ve known I’ve wanted to find my family all my life and I kept asking my adoptive parents questions and all they kept saying was, ‘Oh, she just left you in a train station,’ I’m like, ‘OK, that still doesn’t give me any answers.'”
In her interview with Inside Edition’s Keleigh Nealon, Mika says she posted on a genealogy site asking for help and was contacted by Lynn-Marie Carty, who has helped others track down a family in the past.
It was Carty who used a DNA kit from Ancestry.com to register Mika’s DNA in hope of a familial match. Carty registered Mika’s DNA on My Heritage, and a match was found. She was then able to link Mika with her cousins and then, eventually, her mother and father.
Mika additionally shared with Inside Edition that her mother had been mentally ill at the time of their separation. She had entered a hospital shortly after her daughter’s disappearance.
While Mika’s grandmother searched for her, she was unable to locate her until after she had been adopted. Unfortunately, those records were sealed making hopes of reuniting futile.
Mika now is reuniting with her long-lost family one at a time. She has met with her birth sister and uncle. While she has spoken with her mother and father on the phone, she plans to connect with them in person in September.
Mika told Nealon about the conclusion of her story, “All my life I was never angry with my birth family at all,” she said. “I knew that one day maybe I’d find somebody, I’m very happy.”
A four-decade-long search will come to its end when Mika reunites with her mother and father in September. After 40 years of wondering, Mika will hopefully have all of the answers she’s been searching for to conclude her miraculous story.
Your first step in your search and reunion journey is to register in Adoption.com’s Reunion Registry.
