Ties of the Heart

One afternoon, on a late summer day in 1989, two teenagers, Christopher Astle and Emily Yanich, discovered an abandoned newborn. They took the baby to Emily’s home where her stepfather called the police. The authorities briskly stepped in, and assumed custody of the baby girl who was later adopted.


Taken in by others, but not forgotten by the two young people who had played such an unexpected and crucial role in the baby’s life. Emily would cry when recounting the story to others, and the two of them remained friends. Over the years, Chris and Emily moved, married other people, and had their own families, but they nevertheless stayed in touch, bound by their rescue of the baby. They would call each other every year on Sept. 6th - the day they had found the abandoned child.

They were not the only ones who remembered. Twenty years later, on Dec. 2nd, both of them received a Facebook message from a college student named Mia Fleming – Were they the same Chris and Emily who had found a baby left outside a stranger’s door? If so, she just wanted to say thanks.

Mia, ever since she had learned the story of her birth had never forgotten them, and had been trying to track them down for several years before she was finally successful. She says, “I didn’t know how they would feel.”

Chris and Emily know exactly how they feel. Emily says, “It's like a miracle… My heart is filled now. There was always a little spot missing.” Chris says, “It's the best Christmas present I have ever gotten.”

Not all relationships can be easily named, and ultimately, kinship is a matter of the heart not merely the ties of blood.


Source: The Washington Post, Thursday, December 17, 2009