A Wyoming woman discovered she may need have a lot more Christmas gifts to buy this year.
Jessica Lippincott of Thermopolis, Wyoming, grew up feeling in her gut that something wasn't quite right about her family history. That hunch was validated recently when a genetics analysis revealed that she had 50 half-siblings.
She used to ask her mother if she was adopted, she told KTVQ, curious if she had brothers and sisters. Lippincott, an only child, said she "felt" like she had brothers and sisters.
Lippincott's mother brushed off the question but, in the final days of her life, she revealed the truth: she had used a sperm donor to become pregnant with Jessica.
“I remember when she passed away, she was terminally ill with cancer, and I was writing her obituary, and I started to ask her some questions about who I thought was my real father because I don’t have any memories,” Lippincott said. “And she started to tell me. And I said, ‘What do you mean?’ And she said she used a sperm donor and went to a fertility clinic.”
Lippincott asked her mother for more information, but she became "nervous" and "didn't want to talk about it anymore," so she dropped it to avoid making her mother upset.
Her mother ultimately died in 2013, but the implications of her secret weighed on Lippincott. Four years later, she decided to try 23andMe, a genetic testing service that provides people detailed information about their genetic history.
“And of course, by the time I did take the test, she had already passed away, so I couldn’t ask any more questions, and the stepfather who raised me had passed, and so I couldn’t ask him any questions as well,” she said.
Lippincott's stepfather adopted her when she was young and raised him as her own. She had previously thought her birth father was another man, Thomas Peters, who separated from her mother and later abducted her from her grandparents. Peters and Lippincott were found three months later in Florida by a private investigator her mother hired, according to KTVQ.
The abduction was widely reported in the media at the time, and Lippincott grew up “embarrassed” at the prospect of Peters being her father. But the genetic test provided some relief: Peters wasn't her father, and she wasn't an only child.
According to the test, she has 50 confirmed half-siblings via her father, the sperm donor.
Since the test, more half-siblings have been added to her DNA relative list, and she suspects more are likely out there.
"We all have a lot of the same eyes and mouth, so yeah," she said.
The discovery set her on a journey to meet her half-siblings. She said she's been busy building relationships with her genetic relatives and making up for lost time.
“And there are some that I haven’t met yet, and that is okay. I will one day,” she said.
She's also met her biological father; she said he is a man in his 80's who is currently living in Southern California. He's met her children, which she called "special."
Lippincott said she was thrilled to learn she had such an enormous extended family, and plans to continue building bonds with the newly-discovered side of her life.
“My heart is full,” she said.
