Rudy Owens’ memoir on the American adoption experience
© 2017 Rudy Owens. All rights reserved.
I’m going to have to get used to the idea I got a grown-up son now.
—Rudy Owens’s Birth Mother, 1989
My adoption forced me to become a private detective. I acquired that profession’s skillset out of necessity. I developed informal personal networks, talking to people who had conducted adoption searches in Washington state and Michigan. I learned how to navigate records systems, with people, public agencies, organizations, and libraries. I learned how to make up a story on the phone when I called someone, if I knew telling the truth about who I was and why I was asking for information would trigger fear. I had learned already from strangers and those I knew that people viewed me with both suspicion and fear, because I was both an adoptee and, yes, a bastard.
I used detective tricks I had picked up watching the Rockford Files. They really worked. I learned to never make people who helped you feel nervous or afraid. This was my underlying rule of information acquisition. I also learned early on who likely would be a friend, but not always. Luckily, enough adoptees, some sympathetic women, and a few personal connections paid off.
Return to Chapter 9: The Paper Chase
Read More: Chapter 11: Out of the Darkness: A Son Emerges from the Shadows