Chilean Man Reunites With Birth Family After 42 Years, Learns He Was Kidnapped at Birth

Added: 2026-05-25

[00:00:03]Those were the first words Jimmy Lippard Thiden said to his biological mother in Spanish as they embraced each other through tears. What sounded like a simple greeting had taken Jimmy 42 years to finally say to his mother.

[00:00:20]>> She says, "Miho, you have no idea the oceans I'm crying for you. How many nights I've laid awake praying that God let me live long enough to learn what happened to you.

[00:00:32]>> How do you hug someone in a way that makes up for 42 years of us? 42 years robbed and stolen from us all crashing into this moment. The truth was for 42 years he had grown up believing he was an orphaned adoptee. He had no idea who his biological parents were. And at one point he even believed they might have died. Even Jimmy's adoptive parents had no idea that adopting him meant a child had been taken away from his real family. It wasn't until the truth slowly began to come to light.

[00:01:11]Chilean man reunites with birth family after 42 years learns he was kidnapped at birth.

[00:01:20]Jimmy Lippard Thyiden was born in 1980 in Santiago, Chile. But just moments after he came into the world, he was taken away and adopted by an American family. Other than being adopted, Jimmy's childhood was not much different from other children's. He grew up in Virginia in a loving home alongside his adoptive siblings. Jimmy's adoptive mother always respected him. She told him early on that he was born in Chile and that he was not their biological son. But to his family, Jimmy was never treated any differently. He was always loved as their own child. As an adult, Jimmy served 19 years in the US Marines before becoming a criminal defense attorney. He and his adoptive family always believed he had no living relatives left in Chile. Because of that, Jimmy never thought about searching for his biological parents.

[00:02:21]But everything began to change in April 2023 when he read a USA Today article about a California man who discovered he had been taken from his mother in Chile and illegally adopted by an American couple.

[00:02:36]According to the report, human rights organizations believe that more than 20,000 babies were taken from poor mothers in Chile and adopted out to families overseas. Those adoptive families paid fees they believed were legal, while the truth about the baby's origins was hidden from them. Midwives, doctors, social workers, nuns, priests, and even judges were believed to have been involved in the network. A scheme that generated huge profits during Chile's dictatorship under Agusto Pinocha from 1973 to 1990. According to USA Today, reporters from the Chileain investigative news outlet Cyper first exposed the scandal in 2014.

[00:03:18]Jimmy was stunned when he realized he could also be one of the victims of what was essentially a human trafficking operation. At that moment, he became determined to uncover the truth. Over the following weeks, Jimmy contacted an organization called Nosbuskamos, which means we search for each other in Spanish. The group's volunteers use DNA tests donated by the genealogy platform My Heritage to help reunite families separated during the Pinocha era. After months of effort from Nos Buskamos, the truth finally came to light. when I got the results and it was crazy like it took less than 42 days to kind of destroy 42 years of a lie.

[00:04:01]>> Jimmy still had family in Chile. His biological mother was Maria Angelica Gonzalez who was living in Valdivia. He also had four biological brothers and one sister. First, Maria could not believe it was real. She refused to answer phone calls because she was afraid of hoping again, only to be heartbroken once more. That changed when Jimmy sent her a photo of his wife and two daughters. He continued sending childhood photos, pictures from his time in the military, wedding photos, and memories from every stage of his life.

[00:04:40]In the end, Maria finally believed that the son she had lost more than 40 years earlier was still alive and finding his way back to her. The reunion and the hugs meant to heal 42 lost years.

[00:04:56]Not long after that, Jimmy, his wife, and their two daughters decided to travel to Chile to reunite with his biological mother, accompanied by the organization Noskamos.

[00:05:08]The entire reunion was also documented by the group.

[00:05:13]According to Maria, 42 years earlier, she gave birth to Jimmy at a hospital in Santiago. Maria only had a short time to hold and see her baby before hospital staff took him away and placed him in an incubator, saying he had been born prematurely.

[00:05:30]Maria was told to return home. But when she came back to take her baby, medical staff informed her that the boy had died. With nothing else she could do, Maria returned home carrying the pain of losing her son for decades. But the truth was completely different. Jimmy had been taken away and adopted out without his mother's consent.

[00:05:54]>> For many of these women, they didn't know that they even have a child out there. They were they went home empty-handed from the hospital. Baby born premature taken from them to be put into an incubator. And then they were told baby died. There's no grave. Baby was disposed of. They went home empty-handed. So they didn't know. They weren't searching.

[00:06:14]>> Just plain and simple. They were stealing kids and selling them. This is was not for saving them from poorness or saving them from starving or whatever.

[00:06:26]That was the movie they present. But the the the real story was that there were these kids were stolen from poor families, poor women that didn't know how to defend themselves.

[00:06:38]>> After believing she had lost her son forever, Maria never imagined that 42 years later, he would return home alive, healthy, and still thinking about her.

[00:06:49]>> It's been 42 years, almost 43 years. Um, and I've never never met her. Um, I didn't, she didn't know about me, uh, because I was taken from her at birth and she was told that I was dead and that, um, when she asked for my body, they told her that they had disposed of it.

[00:07:17]And so, we've never held each other.

[00:07:20]We've never hugged.

[00:07:22]And today I'm going to get to do that for the first time.

[00:07:27]>> According to USA Today, Maria called reuniting with her son a miracle from God. Overcome with emotion, she said, "When I learned that he was alive, I couldn't believe it." The moment Jimmy walked toward his mother's house holding a bouquet of flowers. He broke down in tears and greeted her in Spanish. Ola mama demo mucho. Maria immediately opened her arms to embrace her son as she cried with emotion. Jimmy later told the Associated Press about the reunion.

[00:08:03]It knocked the wind out of me. I was suffocated by the gravity of this moment. How do you hug someone in a way that makes up for 42 years of hugs?

[00:08:15]As he stepped inside his mother's home, Jimmy became even more emotional when he saw 42 colorful balloons, each one representing a year they had lost apart from each other. The family popped the balloons together and sang happy birthday to him. Jimmy said it felt like a way of facing all the lost years, but also the beginning of healing. During his time with his mother, Jimmy said the two of them walked through her neighborhood together. He walked through the market he might have grown up shopping at and the streets he would have known if he had never been taken from his mother. His mother once told him, "Son, you cannot imagine how much I cried for you. So many nights I stayed awake praying that God would let me live long enough to learn what happened to you." Jimmy also realized that he and his mother shared the same love for cooking. He said, "My hands need dough just like my mother's." As the two of them made fried empanadas together, Jimmy promised he would continue using the family recipe to preserve his connection to both his family and his culture.

[00:09:24]>> I'm able to undo 42 years of lies >> and I'm able to meet my mama and my brothers and my sister and the life that I've never known.

[00:09:39]And then I get to take my children, my daughters, my girls to a country that's part of who they are. And that they'll have an appreciation for this culture that I never even got to have. Um, that's exciting.

[00:09:55]That's joy.

[00:09:57]Hey, >> experiencing everyday life in Valdivia alongside his mother made him feel even more deeply what had been lost. Speaking about his mother, he said everything became so real. To know her is to know she is a loving and caring person.

[00:10:20]Even after reuniting with his biological mother, Jimmy remained deeply grateful to his adoptive family in America for giving him every opportunity to build a life there.

[00:10:32]>> Popping those balloons was simultaneously anguishing and empowering. I've had a wonderful life in America. My parents in America have loved me dearly. My mom and dad have cared for me, given me opportunities, education, love.

[00:10:51]I've had a wonderful life, but every single one of those balloons is a year of wrong.

[00:10:56]>> This is counterfeit adoption. This is creating paperwork to perpetuate the ruse of legitimate adoption to an unwitting person. So, my mama is a victim. I am a victim. My adoptive parents are a victim of these people of Talma Urebe and Maria Louisa Aventando who just stole and trafficked children.

[00:11:21]And now what my parents believe to be one of the most like altruistic I don't know like this most loving acts they ever did is tainted by this by this egregious horrible thing.

[00:11:35]My parents wanted a family, but they never wanted it like this.

[00:11:38]>> After the reunion, Jimmy did not stop at simply finding his family. He decided to speak out and fight for justice for the tens of thousands of children who may have gone through the same thing. In 2024, Jimmy Lippard Thiden Gonzalez filed a criminal complaint against the Chilean state, accusing the government of either participating in or turning a blind eye to a system of forced adoptions that lasted for decades under the dictatorship of Agusto Pinocha.

[00:12:07]Jimmy said the first thing he wants is not money, but recognition that these wrongs truly happened. Jimmy said he now relies on a support network of around 40 adopes with stories similar to his own.

[00:12:22]According to USA Today, he was one of six people who uncovered the truth about their past after the newspaper investigative series published in April.

[00:12:33]Jimmy also told USA Today that he wants the Chilean government to provide counseling support for children trafficked during the Pinocha era. He also hopes the government will prosecute anyone still alive who knowingly participated in the illegal adoptions.

[00:12:49]At the same time, he urged Chile to do everything possible to identify and reunite separated families, including helping cover travel expenses.

[00:13:00]He said, "We will keep telling these stories until every child is found or every family is reunited.