Father Meets Daughter After a DNA Test

A Valley man met a daughter he never knew about by a DNA kit from 23andMe.Stephanie said her adopted parents bought her a 23andMe kit as a Christmas gift last year. She completed the test and mailed it in.The results came back at the end of January and within an hour, Stephanie’s great aunt connected her and her biological father, Tom, for the first time.

Stephanie said that better than I ever expected to be honest. when you reach out for these. you don’t know how they’re going to react or what the family knows or doesn’t know. Everybody in his life was beyond welcoming and it’s been incredible to connect with people that I never thought I would have. Stephanie encourages anyone who feels that missing piece in their life to try a DNA kit because you never know unless you take that chance.

Mesa resident Tom Chaney was a Marine stationed in Alaska in the mid-1980s. He had a brief relationship with a woman before being moved on to Hawaii. The result of that relationship hugged him in the middle of Phoenix’s Sky Harbor Airport 34 years later. Both of them were hardly able to speak and hardly needed to do so. That is the beginning and end of the story, but most of the middle of the story centres on Stephanie McKenna, who was put up for adoption by her birth mother.

McKenna’s adopted family gifted her a 23AndMe DNA kit for Christmas. She was matched with a man named Tom Chaney, who turned out to be her grandfather. Through 23AndMe and Facebook, she eventually found her father and, after a deep breath, sent him a message. Chaney and McKenna began corresponding on February 6, 2021. He eventually took a DNA test himself and determined he was a match with her.