news-record.com

Mary Radcliffe thought she’d lost her.

The little girl she’d raised as a toddler. The girl whose pictures and report cards she kept. The girl who never left Radcliffe’s thoughts since she was adopted out of her foster home 25 years ago.

Then, Radcliffe found her again.

All thanks to the power of memories, love and reality TV.

“It was the most wonderful thing,” Radcliffe said.

The story began in New York, when Radcliffe learned she probably wouldn’t be able to have children.

That’s when Tamisha entered her life. Radcliffe and her husband, Clement , took the 2-year-old in as a foster child.

A few years later, the family grew. Radcliffe gave birth to a girl. But she kept Tamisha.

“As far as my mother was concerned, she was her child,” said Radcliffe’s daughter, LaChaya Jones of Greensboro.

But the couple never formally adopted Tamisha. That was the plan, but they wanted to wait until they were more financially secure. And as Tamisha got older, it seemed less likely that she’d be chosen for adoption.

Then came the day.

Tamisha had been adopted. There wasn’t much time to prepare, to talk about what was happening. She was gone. She was 7 years old.

“It just happened really fast,” Radcliffe said. “She was screaming.”

From that point on, Tamisha was like a ghost, never visible, yet always in their lives.

“It really hurt my mother,” Jones said. “I know that’s something she’s carried around her all this time.”

Jones, then only 2 years old, doesn’t remember the girl who could have been her sister. And yet she does.

“My mother kept lots of pictures. Birthday party pictures. Disney World. Christmas,” she said.

They would pull them out and look at them. And wonder.

The family moved to North Carolina. And the story might have ended.

But Jones happened to watch a TV show called “The Locator.” It reconnects people who have lost touch over the years. Some of the reunions are happy. Some are not.

It got her thinking. She went to the Web site and put in some information. Then, she forgot about it. Until last October.

“Lo and behold, they called back,” she said.

The search was on.

For a time, there came a flurry of phone calls. Looking for information, for leads.

Then in February, they got a call. Troy Dunn , the host of the show, was coming to Greensboro.

Dunn met Radcliffe, who lives in Salisbury, and Jones at the O. Henry Hotel . He had some news. He had found Tamisha and brought her with him.

“She just came up from behind. It was amazing,” Jones said.

“It was a release for the both of us,” Radcliffe said. “That was wonderful for me, and it was wonderful for her.”

They shared stories, memories, photos.

It turned out that Radcliffe wasn’t the only one haunted by the separation.

All those years, Tamisha had asked herself why it happened.

“She wondered if there was something she had done wrong,” Jones said. “They both carried that around with them for 25 years.”

Since then, they’ve kept in touch.

Tamisha Granger , who the N.Y. Daily News reports is a 32-year-old medical secretary in Queens, even came to a family reunion this year.

And they won’t forget the connection that was lost — and remade.

“Troy Dunn, he’s just an amazing person,” Jones said. “Just to have the power to connect people that have been lost from each other’s lives.”

Contact Jason Hardin at 373-7021 or jason.hardin@news-record.com