Meet Steve
Over 135,000 children are adopted in the United States each year. Many grow up and decide to search for their biological parents, for many different reasons. Steve Flaig was one of those children. After many years of wondering, he set on his search to find his birth mother, and he found her in the most unexpected place.
Adopted from birth, Steve Flaig grew up in Michigan, with adoptive parents Pat and Lois Flaig. His parents were always very open with Steve about his adoption. He had a happy childhood and as an adult began working as a delivery driver for the Plainfield Avenue branch of Lowe’s. When Steve was 18-years-old he decided it was time to put his wondering about his biological mother to rest.
The Search Begins
With the support of his parents, Flaig asked D.A. Blodgett for Children, the agency that arranged his adoption, for any information they had on his background. Only a few short months later the information arrived and it included the name of his birth mother.
He used her name as a keyword to search the internet. Unfortunately, they search came back empty.
A Surprising Find
Four years after his initial search, Steve looked again at his background info. It was then that he made a startling discovery. He had been typing his biological mother’s last name wrong the entire time he was searching.
He had been writing “Talladay” instead of the correct, “Tallady”. He quickly raced to the computer to do another search.
A Match
After searching his biological mother’s correct name on the internet he quickly found an address. To his surprise, the address was less than a mile from the Lowe’s at which he worked.
He mentioned to his boss at work the strange coincidence, with which his boss replied “You mean Chris Tallady, who works here?” Could Chris have possibly been working with his biological mother?
It’s Her!
Chris had been working at Lowe’s for two years and at the time of the discovery, his biological mother, Chris, had only been there for 6 months. Steve did not know how to tell her.
“I would walk by her, look at her from a distance, not knowing how to approach her,” Flaig told The Seattle Times. “You don’t come stocked with information on how to deal with this.”