"I finally found him!" How best friends discovered they were brother and sister
Dave Green and Andrea Ermston both worked at Manchester Airport. After meeting, they became surprisingly fast friends and understood each other with a glance — but everything fell into place when they learned the truth, writes BBC.
Andrea and Dave met in 2005 when they both worked at Manchester Airport
They met in 2005. Dave managed the bus station at the airport, while Andrea serviced vending machines. Within two years, they became close friends, exchanging messages and calling each other in their free time.
One day during a phone conversation, Dave told Andrea that he was adopted as a child, and his birth name was Stuart Proudlove.
"I froze and went silent for a minute," Andrea recalls.
Her maiden name was Proudlove, and she knew she had an older brother who had been adopted by another family before she was born.
"It's not a very common surname; I haven't met anyone else with it apart from our relatives. It had to be him!" she says.
Andrea immediately called her mother, Susan, to confirm her brother's birth date. Everything matched: March 24, 1966.
She immediately called Dave back.
"I said, 'It has to be you, it has to be you! I need to see you,' and I drove to pick him up," Andrea told the BBC.
"I was trembling, I was just trembling, my heart was pounding," she says. "I finally found him! It's incredible."
After meeting, they drove to Susan's, their mother's, house, and Dave immediately realized they were driving a route he had driven by bus before becoming a bus station manager. Unbeknownst to him, he had constantly been passing his mother's house and the school where his sister studied. His biological, blood family was closer than he thought.
According to Susan, the moment she met Dave felt unreal.
"There were many tears. Then we all hugged," Andrea recounts. "I couldn't believe my brother and my mom met, it was wonderful."
Susan had told her about having a brother when she was a child. She said he had been adopted and went to a wonderful woman who couldn't have children of her own.
"At that moment, I immediately wanted to go and call him so we could play," Andrea recalls.
"I asked if we could go and pick him up. Mom explained that it doesn't work that way, so I promised her that I would find him one day."
Susan had told her she tried to find her son with the help of the Salvation Army, but to no avail.
And now they were finally reunited.
"She wanted this for as long as I can remember," Andrea says. "So yes, I fulfilled what I promised her."
On Susan's mantelpiece stood a photograph of baby Dave. His adoptive parents had sent her this picture a few days after the adoption. The same photograph also hung in Dave's adoptive parents' home.
Dave learned he was adopted at the age of 10 when his adoptive parents showed him the documents. According to him, he had a very happy childhood and had no desire to search for his biological mother.
"I didn't feel I had to search or that I had any unresolved questions," he adds.
"Winning the Lottery"
For all three, the reunion became a turning point in their lives.
"At that time, there was very little positivity in my life, and then I found out that my best friend was my sister," Dave says. "I found my biological mother and was able to make her truly happy. And I found a family I didn't even know existed before."
Susan recently passed away, but according to Dave and Andrea, they are glad she had the chance to reunite with her son.
"She desperately wanted to find you to make sure you had a really good life," Andrea tells her brother.
For her, the family reunion was a moment of joy mixed with sadness. She had dreamed of finding her brother for many years.
"Unfortunately, my mom and dad split up, and I had to go through a lot of difficult moments, knowing that there was a brother somewhere, but I didn't know exactly where," she says.
The brother and sister moved to the town of Kidsgrove in Staffordshire and admit that they cherish every minute spent together.
What ultimately happened to them, they both call "winning the lottery."