Positivity: Adopted son finds birth mom at his workplace

From Grand Rapids, Michigan (HT Good News Blog):

December 18, 2007 20:39PM

For years, Steve Flaig, a delivery truck driver at the Lowe’s store on Plainfield Avenue, had searched for his birth mother.

He found her working the cash register at the front of the store.

For several months, he and Christine Tallady had known each other casually as co-workers. Last Friday they met for the first time as mother and son.

“I have a complete family now, all my kids,” said Tallady, who has two younger children. “It’s a perfect time of year. It’s the best Christmas present ever.”

For Flaig, it was the reunion he had dreamed of for much of his 22 years. He had always known he was adopted, and his parents, Pat and Lois Flaig, who raised him since his birth, supported his decision to search for his birth mother.

It was a tough decision for Tallady, unmarried at the time, to give him up when he was born on Oct. 5, 1985, but “I wasn’t ready to be a mother,” she said.

She left the adoption record open, figuring he might want to contact her someday, and she often thought of him, particularly on his birthday. But life went on. She got married, had two more kids.

Four years ago, when Flaig turned 18, he asked DA Blodgett for Children, the agency that arranged his adoption, for his background information. A couple of months later, it came, including his birth mother’s name.

He searched the Internet for her address and came up empty. In October, around the time of his 22nd birthday, he took out the paperwork from DA Blodgett and realized he had been spelling his mother’s surname wrong as “Talladay.” He typed “Tallady” into a search engine and came up with an address on West River Drive less than a mile from the Lowe’s store.

He mentioned it to his boss, and she said, “You mean Chris Tallady, who works here?” He was stunned.

“I was like, there’s no possible way,” he said. “It’s just such a bizarre situation.”

He had been working at Lowe’s for two years. She was hired in April as head cashier.

Over the past two months, “I would walk by her, look at her from a distance, not knowing how to approach her,” Flaig said. “You don’t come stocked with information on how to deal with this.” …..

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