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REA L ESTAT E CENTRE INC., BROKERAGE DIRECT 416-704-5211 cbarrager@gmail.com Read my featured articles on www.torontosun.com An inheritance could make the difference between a comfortable retirement and a stretched one. Contact our office for more information and how we can help. Douglas Riding, BA, CFP®, FMA Investment Advisor 348 Guelph Street, Unit#3, Georgetown, ON 905 877-4579 www.ridingteam.ca HowTo MakeThe Most Of Your Inheritance Continued from pg. 1 "I feel like I have a piece of my mother back and that means the world to me. It must have been difficult for her to cel- ebrate my birthday every year knowing she had another daughter who shared the same date and never knew where she was. She never wanted to give up (Claire), but for whatever reason, she did." Not long after Claire (nee Andrea Mitchell) was born, Diane and husband Michael were in the process of separat- ing and decided to put their daughter up for adoption. Then six-year-old Sam did her best to prevent her sister from leaving, scooping the baby from the crib and hid- ing behind a chair on the day Claire was taken away for adoption, to no avail. They wouldn't see each other again for more than 40 years. Diane and Sam moved to Canada shortly after- ward and in a romantic twist to the story, Michael followed them here a year later to court and then marry Diane, with Victoria subsequently entering the world. Michael died on Aug. 7, 2003. Due to the genetic nature of the kidney disesase, all three daughters acquired the disorder. Sam and Victoria both have fully functioning kidneys and didn't know they had a potential problem until their mother died, while unknowingly, Claire grew up in England before discovering at age 19 that she would need a transplant, around the same time that adoptive mother Margaret told her she had another family. "I thought there was something else I might need to look out for connected to the kidney disease, which prompted my initial search," said 42-year-old Claire, now a le- gal secretary in Ayr, Scotland. She made a couple of attempts using a website called Birthlink that came up fruit- less, while Victoria and Sam also tried un- successfully from this side of the Atlantic. Last September, with her kidneys func- tioning at only a small fraction of their capacity, Claire underwent organ donor transplant surgery, which returned her health to nearly normal with a few limita- tions. Then a breakthrough came on the trail of her long-lost family as a Scottish charitable group called Search Angels diso- vered that her birth mother had registered Claire in 1994 as being adopted, linking her to contact info for Victoria and Sam. This past December, while at a sales meeting in Montreal, Victoria got an email while sitting in a hotel lobby from a strang- er "with a funky address" that had the fa- miliar name Andrea Mitchell in the subject line. "My name is Claire Heathcote. I was born Andrea Kate Mitchell and I believe you are my birth sister," read the email. After exchanging sev- eral messages, the sis- ters were face to face on Skype within a couple hours, and besides their striking resemblance, they exchanged informa- tion about each other that nobody else could have known. Claire has been a dedicated viewer of a Scottish TV program called Long Lost Family and always ends up in teary sham- bles at its conclusion. Her husband Ian ini- tially questioned whether reaching out to the unknown might result in some findings she wouldn't want to see or hear about. "I said to him, you don't know what it's like not to know who these people are and who you look like. I don't think that's some- thing I could die never having known." In the meantime, there's a few things the sisters would like to do together, that they never got to experience as kids, like watching movies such as Dirty Dancing and Pretty Woman, or just walking down to the park and push each other on the swings. "It just doesn't seem real," added Vic- toria. "You wouldn't think one of those amazing real-life stories would happen to us, where you couldn't wish for anything more." Sisters shared same birthday "You wouldn't think one of those amazing real-life stories would happen to us, where you couldn't wish for anything more." --Victoria Guzzo