I was twelve days old when an American Air Force serviceman and his wife brought me home from a hospital in England. My biological mother, a young Englishwoman named Patricia Ann Phillips from Smethwick, made an impossible choice. I would grow up in America — moving between Colorado, California, Arizona, Idaho, Kansas, Oklahoma, and elsewhere as my adoptive father served in the Air Force — with parents who loved me and gave me every opportunity, and who never hid the truth of where I came from.
The family who brought me homeEngland, my first weeks — with my adoptive father Lewis, my mother Joyce holding me, and my sister Laura on Lewis's lap.
Where the story startsMy biological mother's birth certificate — Patricia Ann Phillips, Smethwick, England, 1944.
I always knew I was adopted, and I always wanted to know the rest of the story. Who was she? Who was my father? Who else was out there, walking around with the same last name I never got to keep?
I wondered about the rest of the story for decades. Records were sealed. Trails went cold. The search only began in earnest around 2018 — the year I took my first DNA test. Later, I hired a professional genealogist in the UK to help push through the walls I couldn't get past — thousands of dollars, more than a year of work, one lead I hadn't already found on my own.
That's when I realized my three decades of Navy technical work — nuclear engineering, aviation, and operations research — weren't just a career; they were an advantage. So I stopped waiting for someone else to solve it, and I treated the search like the intelligence problem it was.
The father I never knewKenneth — my biological father — in a portrait from before I was born.
I found my biological father, Kenneth, and my two brothers on his side. Meeting the three of them at the same time was surreal — and one of the best moments of my life.
Ilfracombe, Devon · 2022A matching leather case with shot glasses — a gift my brothers presented me with when we met. Each of us got one.
The toastThe three of us with the shot glasses from the Ilfracombe cases above — first drink together.
I also found my sister on my mother's side, living in Australia. My biological mother had passed in 2017 — before I was able to reach her. She's buried at Portchester Crematorium, near Portsmouth on the south coast of England. Now that I know where she is, I plan to visit soon.
Where my mother restsPortchester Crematorium, Portsmouth. She passed before I found her.
That work — the actual sitting-with-records, thinking-in-frameworks, cross-checking-every-claim work — is what CARES does now for other people. Some are adoptees like me. Some are second-generation Americans piecing together a grandparent's village in Sicily or Kraków. Some are just curious about where their family started.
Whatever brings you here, the approach is the same: patience, evidence, and honest reporting of what we find — including what we don't.
Dale Johnson · Founder, CARES, LLC
