Oregon Public Broadcasting

Three sisters have curiosity, a private detective and Facebook to thank for reuniting them. 

A Pendleton woman, Francine Scott-Hetrick, thought she only had one sister. They separated after going into the foster care system 25 years ago. 

Now, she has not one, but two, sisters in her life.

Their story stopped, and resumed, with two old photos that haunted Ginger Moody, a waitress in Georgia, for years. 

In the image, two little girls smile as they pose with identical blue bicycles. Ginger’s alcoholic mother had sent her the photo in 1979 when Ginger was 13. Just a few months earlier, Ginger had learned that the people who raised her as mom and dad were really her aunt and uncle. 

The photo came in a letter from her birth mother and revealed a surprise — two younger sisters who looked to be about 6 and 7. Their names were Francine and Shirley. Not much later, Ginger learned her mother had killed herself.

In 2004, after years of wondering and searching, Ginger hired a private investigator to find her sisters. Armed with the photo and the name of Ginger’s mother and sisters, Nick Giampietro of ThirdEye Investigations, Deltona, Fla., did the legwork. Three months later, he found Francine Scott-Hetrick in Pendleton. 

Giampietro called Francine to drop the bomb.

“Your sister is looking for you,” she remembered the detective saying.

The Pendleton woman was struck dumb. Her mother had mentioned a half-sister, but said the girl had died as a baby.

“I was floored,” recalled Francine, 39. 

Francine got on a plane for the first time ever to fly to Perry, Ga., to meet Ginger. 

“The whole plane ride I was pretty nervous,” Francine said. “At the airport, she was standing there. I knew her right away.”

The two sisters have the same cheekbones and love to cook. They both stand 5-feet-4-inches tall. They share the same positive temperament.

Francine met other relatives — her aunt, cousins, nieces, her mom’s twin brother. They talked about finding Shirley, but the trail leading to their other sister soon ran cold.

“After 1999, there was no record of her,” Ginger said. “Her Social Security number wasn’t being used. I thought she had died.”

The investigator had another theory.

“In cases of adoption, Social Security numbers sometimes get changed,” said Giampietro.

Seven years passed. Then, about a month ago, it was social media to the rescue.

Just before Christmas 2011, in a group home in Oklahoma, home-health worker Rhonda Burridge, who’d heard Shirley Ordiway’s stories of a missing little sister, embarked on Facebook search. Burridge, Shirley’s caregiver, eventually located Francine’s page on the social media website. Burridge said she found herself thinking Francine could pass for Shirley’s twin.

Burridge sent a Facebook message to Francine, asking if she had a sister named Shirley. Francine reacted with a mixture of jubilation and dismay. Shirley, it seemed, was mentally ill, physically disabled and living in a group home in Oklahoma. Francine called Shirley as soon as she got the number.

“I ran out of minutes,” Francine said. “We talked an hour and a half.”

After connecting with her two younger half-sisters, Ginger realized being abandoned as a baby might have given her a more stable and healthy life than her siblings. Because of neglect by alcoholic parents, the girls, both hearing impaired, had been in and out of Washington state’s foster care system. Their mother’s death certificate showed she died of suicide when Francine was 9 and Shirley was 10. Their father died later that year of a heart attack. 

Francine was a frequent runaway from her foster homes and, later, her adoptive parents. She became addicted to heroin, lived on the streets in Seattle and Portland and finally ended up in prison on drug charges. The latter, she said, was a blessing.

“If it hadn’t of been for prison, I’d still be living under a bridge and shooting dope,” she said. “I’d probably be dead.”

Life still isn’t anywhere near perfect for Francine. She lives on disability. Her mission, she said, is serving as sponsor for women in the Narcotics Anonymous program and raising her 11-year-old son, Rannon.

Shirley, 40, who was born with fetal alcohol syndrome, faced her own battles in the foster care system and with her adopted family. 

Francine hasn’t yet met Shirley because she can’t afford the plane ticket. Ginger, however, drove from Georgia to the group home where Shirley lives in Tulsa, Okla. She found a woman who is sometimes childlike. Shirley, who deals with multiple health challenges, including bi-polar disorder, greeted Ginger with excitement. The sisters got their nails done and ate at the Golden Corral.

Francine stays in touch with both sisters from afar.

“We talk on the phone every day,” she said.

Ginger said she is taking it slow.

“I wanted to find them and slowly build a relationship,” she said. “We grew up on different sides of the world. My No. 1 goal was to let them know I’d always thought about them and cared for them.”

This story originally appeared in East Oregonian.