Tina Ennis; Jill Lopez.Photo: courtesy Tina Ennis and Jill Lopez
A pair of strangers in Oklahoma is living out what sounds like the plot of a Lifetime movie.
After her daughter convinced her to take anAncestry.comDNA test in 2019, Tina Ennis of Hobart, Okla., learned that she was allegedly switched at birth with a woman named Jill Lopez on the same day 57 years ago at a hospital in Duncan, Okla., according toThe Daily Beast.
“My heart just sank because I was just like, ‘This is for real,'” Ennis said of the moment she and Lopez, both 57, confirmed what they feared to be the truth about their parentage.
To add to her pain, Ennis also learned that her own biological parents, Joyce and John Brister, had died years earlier, before she had a chance to meet them. Although Lopez has regaled her with memories and photographs of the couple, Ennis admitted she was now somewhat jealous of her.
“Jill got to be with my real parents, and now she gets to be with my parents I grew up with,” Ennis told the outlet. “I didn’t know what to think about it at first, but the more I think about it, it makes me really sad.”
Tina Ennis; Jill Lopez.courtesy Tina Ennis and Jill Lopez
An attorney for DRH did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment. A trial is set for March 11 at Stephens County District Court.
The saga unfolded when Ennis’ daughter, now 26, convinced the woman Ennis had known as her mother to take an at-home DNA test in 2019 to track down a grandfather the daughter had never met. When she got the results back, Ennis and her daughter learned that their family tree was filled with people with the last name Brister, which was unfamiliar to them.
After Ennis asked Jones to take the test as well, the women were further shocked to find they didn’t appear in each other’s family trees. They even called Ancestry.com’s customer support to confirm the mix-up wasn’t an error on their end.
Ennis' daughter did some social media sleuthing and eventually found Lopez, who was born on the same day as Ennis and bore a strong physical resemblance to Jones. The daughter convinced Lopez to take a DNA test, which quickly confirmed what they feared to be true.
“It was like somebody had ripped out a part of my heart,” Lopez added. “I just couldn’t deal with it.”
Jones was overcome with guilt for missing out on the important moments in Lopez’s life but she was also worried about losing Ennis, the daughter she had raised. Jones said that learning her grandchildren weren’t her biological kin “was one of the low points of the whole thing,” adding, “I felt like I was losing my daughter and my grandchildren too.”
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Although Ennis and Lopez are still struggling to adjust to their situation, they both brought their kids to Jones' house for Christmas, and enjoyed their time together.
“I just had to get my emotions straight for a while, because it’s a whole lot to get your mind around,” Lopez told the Daily Beast. “Like, you had a mom and I had a mom, and now I have a different mom.”
source: people.com
