It’s been nearly half a century since he went looking for his lost twins. Now the search is finally over.
No one wants to be separated from their loved ones.
Our families are our treasure.
That’s why US veteran Sergeant Allen Thomas was determined to find his lost twins, even decades since he’d last seen them.
Sergeant Thomas was commissioned at the age of 19.
In 1966 he was sent to South Korea for service. There he met Pae Seong-Kuem, whom he later named Connie.
They got married and had twins.
Sandra and Jacob. He also adopted Connie’s son from their previous relationship, Jae-Im.
He had a happy family in South Korea until it was time to fly back to the US.
He failed to get Connie and Jae-Im’s passports, so he returned to the United States, leaving his entire family behind.
He continued to write letters and send money to support his family, who were miles away. He missed his family very much.
So he asked to go back.
In the midst of his ministry in Vietnam, he applied for a 30-day leave to visit relatives in South Korea.
He did, but he noticed that things were already different between him and Connie. Leaving her behind was the hardest part, because he couldn’t imagine turning away from his family.
What Sergeant Thomas didn’t know was that it was the last time he saw his family.
It was 1971.
He kept sending letters to Connie, but this time they kept coming back to him. Three years later, he received a final letter from her asking him to take the twins with him.
Even if he wanted to, he couldn’t; He was facing bankruptcy and had no money for it.
In the 80s it got an update.
He received a letter from the United States Department of State and the Pearl S. Buck Foundation that the twins had been put up for adoption.
The only glimmer of hope was that the twins were adopted in the United States.
But he ran into another roadblock.
Because of the data protection laws of the time, no one gave him more information.
He and his wife, Polly Paquin, used all their resources to find the twins, but to no avail.
In 2020 they received help.
Sergeant Thomas posted his story on Facebook, which caught the attention of ABC News, which touched upon research genealogist Pam Slaton.
Slaton received a Facebook message from Korea. It was Keonsu Lee.
Lee works as a police officer in Seoul, South Korea, specializing in finding missing children in the hope of reuniting them with their parents.
With the help of ABC News Seoul bureau chief Joohee Cho, they were able to put the puzzle pieces together. Slaton went back to the Pearl S. Buck Foundation for more information.
She found a clue.
She found that they had changed the twins’ names, but they gave her a clue of their new names.
Sandra’s name was changed to something similar, while James was changed, but “keep some of his name.”
When Slaton searched her database again, one name caught her eye.
Timothy James Parker
She called James and his roommate answered the phone. He confirmed that James was half Korean and had a twin sister named Susan.
This confirmed Slaton’s investigation, prompting her to reunite Thomas with his twins.