On May 3, 1953, two girls, DeeAnn Angell and Kay Rene Reed, were born to two different mothers at the same hospital in the small town of Heppner, Oregon.
Soon, Marjorie Angell held baby DeeAnn in her arms. But she had a worrying hunch—and she insisted that the nurses had given her the wrong child.
Nobody listened. And in the end, the nurses convinced Marjorie that DeeAnn was in fact her daughter and the family thought nothing more of it.
Then 56 years later—the telephone rang and the caller had some shocking news.
When DeeAnn Angell was growing up, she was the only blond, blue-eyed girl in a family of brunettes—and she stood out, to say the least, in of all the family photos.
Meanwhile, Kay Rene Reed experienced much the same feeling of being out of place. The brunette felt like she was the black sheep in a family of blonds. She was unlike any of her siblings and she questioned whether she was actually a Reed.
At the time, DNA technology hadn’t been invented and Kay shrugged off her suspicions.
Then 56 years later, everything changed. Kay’s brother, Bobby, received a call from an elderly woman—who claimed to harbor a giant secret.
Bobby went straight off to meet the woman. She explained that she had known Kay Rene Reed’s mother and that she had also lived next door to the Angell family and their daughter DeeAnn.
The 86-year-old woman was adamant: the two girls had been switched at the hospital. She also explained that she had waited to reveal the shocking news until all four parents had passed away.
Bobby didn’t know what to do. He had always known and loved Kay as his sister and didn’t want to hurt anyone. After talking with his siblings, he decided to tell Kay and DeeAnn.
In the summer of 2009, Kay Rene Reed and DeeAnn Angell had their DNA samples examined in Kennewick, Washington.
And it turned out that Marjorie’s motherly intuition 56 years earlier had been correct. Kay wasn’t a Reed, but an Angell, while DeeAnn was Bobby’s blond, blue-eyed sister.
After the revelation, the two families developed strong ties to each other. Today, Kay and DeeAnn are in close contact and feel like sisters—but wonder what life would have been like if they had grown up in their respective biological families.
“It’s sad just to think I missed out on knowing my own parents,” DeeAnn told ABC News.
Watch a video about two other sisters who were switched at birth here::
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