Jennifer Skiles, 46, managed to track down her dad Paul Lonardo, 66, after the two spent the majority of their lives apart, with Lonardo unaware she existed.
Jennifer from Tennessee spent her life tracking him down and has been adopted for a second time after meeting her real father.
The two realized they were biologically related following a DNA test after Skiles hunted for him for years, with Lonardo formally adopting her in January.
Skiles told PEOPLE that she was born prematurely on an Army base but her birth certificate never formally identified her father.
At the age of three she was put up for adoption by her mother who had got herself into an abusive relationship and decided it was best to give up Skiles.
She told the outlet that after that she grew up in Virginia, and all was well until the age of 12 when her adoptive father started abusing her.
The abuse only ended when he died of a heart attack when she was 18. Her adoptive mother died when she was 25 and she spent years looking for her biological parents.
She told the outlet: ‘There were so many questions, trying to find my identity, who I was, where I came from. The search for belonging and family was so important to me.’
Her journey started after one of her sisters let slip the name of her biological mother, in 2004 she went to Germany and managed to track down her own birth certificate.
The certificate led her to being able to track down her mom Cheryl Brown, who by this point resided in Texas.
Skiles told the outlet that after managing to connect over the phone they bonded immediately.
She said: ‘I understand that you never know what someone’s going through in life until you’re walking in their shoes. And so I just was so thrilled to know her.’
It was from this newfound relationship that she managed to find out the name of Lonardo, but the search was derailed when Brown died in 2017 in a car crash.
She said that she decided to put the search on hold while she dealt with the loss of her biological mother.
Her husband Patrick then encouraged her to send in an Ancestry DNA kit which came back with a hit for someone with the name Santili in 2022.
Skiles told the outlet that Santili was her father’s mother’s maiden name, and the result ‘lit a fire’ under her.
She started reaching out to anybody she could find with the surname Lonardo and explained her situation.
As a result, she put herself in contact with her sister-in-law who explained her father-in-law was in the military at that location when she was born.
Skiles told the outlet: ‘And I instantly was like, “Oh my gosh, be careful what you say. I don’t want you to scare him off”.’
Skiles and Lonardo later spoke on the phone for the first time, saying: ‘As soon as I heard his voice, I cannot explain it, it felt like home.
‘I just melted in the phone, kind of the same way with her, just every breath, I wanted to just take it all in.’
After a DNA test confirmed their relationship three years ago, Lonardo said: ‘It was what we already knew already.’
Skiles was welcomed into Lonardo’s family where he already had three kids, adding: ‘She’s my daughter, like the rest of the kids. Around here, she’s just one of us.’
Skiles said: ‘We’re not going to dwell on the fact that we missed so much, we’re only going to look towards the future and make new memories.’
The two are now preparing to spend a virtual Father’s Day together over FaceTime, with Lonardo residing in Rhode Island.
