A year and a half ago, my wife bought DNA tests for both of us from Ancestry.com. To be honest, we were just curious about our full ethnicity profile and didn’t anticipate any surprises. However, we certainly got some and opened up a huge can of worms on my side of the family. It was interesting, to say the least, and my wife has gotten pretty good at DNA test analysis. However, we didn’t have as big a coincidence as two friends who found out they were biological sisters. Julia Tinetti and Cassandra Madison were coworkers in 2013, with both of them working in New Haven, Connecticut at the Russian Lady Bar.
Both of them were from the Dominican Republic and both of them even had a Dominican Republica flag tattoo. As it turns out, they were both born in that country and adopted from there. The two bonded over their commonalities and became best friends, even joking that they were secretly sisters. They enjoyed going out for drinks and dinner together and even started wearing matching outfits. They were friends for eight years before they realized that they were closely related. Their rapport and connection were very natural for both of them, and people who met them constantly said they looked like sisters.
Interestingly, they even went so far as to compare adoption papers, discovering to their disappointment that their papers didn’t match. They were from two different cities and they had different surnames on the paperwork. Still, they remained convinced that they must be related, and Madison said in an interview with Good Morning America that she felt very strongly about it. Eventually, Madison moved to Virginia Beach, but the pair remained close, talking frequently on social media. Madison says she just couldn’t shake her gut feeling that they must be related.
She was pleased when her adoptive mom bought a 23andMe DNA test for her for Christmas one year. When she got her results in, she quickly connected with distant relatives. One of Julia’s childhood friends helped crack the case. Molly Sapadin was also adopted from the DR in 1990 and when she and Madison compared adoption papers, the last names matched and they had the same birth mother showing. However, they quickly surmised that Julia and Molly’s paperwork got mixed up. Molly’s DNA test confirmed that Madison is her third cousin.
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Finally, Julia took a DNA test and that confirmed that she and Madison were really sisters. Watch their incredible story below.