Roots and branches meet as long-lost siblings unite in Las Vegas

The branches of Sandy McConnell’s family tree took years to come into focus. She knew from early childhood she’d been adopted, but she spent decades wondering about her birth parents and whether she had siblings.

Turns out she did — lots of them. And on Friday, three of her four siblings on her mother’s side were flying to Las Vegas to meet at the Four Queens. For the first time.

McConnell, 72, a valley resident since 1990, planned to stay at the casino this weekend. She pushed back a lock of crimson hair and shuffled into her son’s maroon pickup truck.

They were on their way to the airport for the first time that day to run a sibling shuttle.

“I’ve been looking for these people for so long,” she said.

Worth the wait

McConnell arrived at McCarran International Airport at 3:30 p.m. She slumped into a red hooded jacket and walked up Terminal 3, her son Shawn Bloomer walking next to her.

Her phone rang. It was Judi Steeves, her oldest sister, who would turn 75 Tuesday. She was coming from south Georgia and flying out of Jacksonville, Florida, on Friday.

“Your flight’s delayed?” McConnell asked, pressing her phone to her ear.

She wouldn’t arrive in Vegas until 8:46.

At 5:54 p.m., McConnell stood near baggage carousel 14, staring frantically at her phone, waiting to hear from her youngest sister, Taryn Hunter.

Seconds later, Hunter walked up, arms outstretched.

“Is that my sister? Is that my sister?” She asked. “I have my real-life sister. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

McConnell embraced her, tears welling in her eyes.

“Hi, honey,” Hunter said. “It’s been a journey, right?”

McConnell looked at her youngest sister, her freckles and round glasses. “You’re every bit as beautiful as I thought you’d be,” she said.

Hunter grabbed her sister’s hands. That’s all she had to know.

“We have our mother’s hands.”

Challenging childhood

McConnell never knew her full story. She knew she was born in 1945 at Mercy Hospital in Iowa. At age 4, she learned she had been adopted from the Catholic Charities Diocese in Davenport.

Childhood was rough, she said. Her adoptive parents, Francis and Anna Wertz, were alcoholics, she said. Her mother didn’t work; her father was a sales manager for a dairy company. Parental discipline came from brooms, mops, slaps to the head, and in one instance, burns to fingers.

“We lacked love,” McConnell said.

She was told her birth mother had eight kids and couldn’t afford another.

“I’m your mother,” Anna Wertz told her. “You don’t have another mother.”

When McConnell was 21, she learned from a Catholic Charities caseworker that she wasn’t her mother’s ninth child. Her real mom was blonde and blue-eyed and had studied to be a nurse. Her dad was a dark-haired, dark-eyed soldier.

But the answers didn’t satisfy. McConnell still wondered who she was, where she came from.

Joyous meeting

At 7:37 p.m., in the Four Queens’ casino, 66-year-old Stephan Thress waited to meet his siblings. He had met his older sister, Judi Steeves, once when he was 19 and in the Air Force.

But when he saw his sisters McConnell and Hunter, he smiled and wrapped them in his arms.

“Hiya, sis,” he said to McConnell first.

“You’re tall,” she responded.

Among laughs and tears, Hunter looked at her siblings.

“Sandy’s had an emotional day,” she said. “This is my big brother, Stephan.”

Thress laughed. “I’m just waiting for more,” he said. “There could be more of us.”

At 9:16 p.m., the trio picked up Steeves, who was sitting in a wheelchair, waiting for her bag.

“I want to stand up to greet my family,” Steeves said with a smile. “I’m shaking.”

Thrilling breakthrough

After her adoptive mother died in 1994, McConnell opened a safe deposit box that revealed her birth mother’s name: Wanda Hedges. She had named her baby girl Jacqualine Lee Hedges.

But the name yielded mostly dead ends. Phone calls and letters to Iowans named Hedges went unreturned. Over the years, McConnell married six times, raised four boys and a girl and acquired 14 grandchildren and 14 great-grandchildren. Sometimes, she typed the name Hedges into search engines. Nothing.

In March, she searched death certificates in Iowa, looking for Wanda Hedges. She emailed a researcher, telling her all she knew of her family’s roots.

A couple of days later came a breakthrough. McConnell learned that her mom, born Wanda Weakley, had died in Ohio in June 2002.

Then, a genealogist sent McConnell a contact number for a likely sibling in New York: Hunter, the only one who had been raised by their mom. McConnell said the discovery gave her goosebumps.

She texted Hunter.

“I’m pretty sure I’m your sister,” McConnell wrote. “We have a lot to talk about. Call me.”

Hunter responded, “This is wild. How did you get my number?”

From there, McConnell learned that her mother had been married four times. She also learned that she had three other siblings: Judi Steeves, Stephan Thress and Sheila Robinson.

Robinson 67, who lives in Ohio, couldn’t make it for the reunion.

Loose ends tied

Before going out on the town with her family, Hunter walked across the street from the Four Queens to buy a coffee at McDonald’s.

“They don’t make coffee here like they do in New York,” she said.

“Where in New York?” the girl behind the counter asked.

“Brooklyn,” Hunter said. “I’m here for a family reunion.”

Contact Briana Erickson at berickson@reviewjournal.com or 702-387-5244. Follow @brianarerick on Twitter.