Woman and mom reunite after 35 yrs.

CONNECTED:
Sherry Daniels, 39, was taken from her mother at age 4.

Sherry Daniels recently found her mother after being taken from her 35 years ago.

A Redding resident, Daniels, 39, works in Anderson for Ritchie and Rose Insurance Services.

When Daniels and her mother were separated, it was February 4, 1974, Daniels was just four years old. Her mother, Linda Hillman, was to have life threatening surgery.

The girl's mother arranged with her ex-husband, Sherry's father, to care for the girl at his home in Roseville for 10 days while she recovered from the surgery.

When Hillman returned to pick up her daughter, she found an empty house with no evidence that her daughter had even been there.

Hillman searched door to door in hopes that her daughter would be found safe. Eventually, Hillman hired private detectives to search for her missing daughter. Each time Hillman came close to finding her daughter, the ex-husband would disappear once again with the girl.

"It seemed like my mom was always one step behind my father and my grandmother. As soon as they would come close to finding us, we would pack up the place we were living and we would be gone within a day," stated Daniels.

At age 12, Sherry ran away from her abusers and moved out on her own, living in an apartment in Anderson that her paternal grandmother helped furnish. She has been on her own ever since. Her grandmother and the rest of the family then moved back to the Sacramento area.

Growing up, Sherry Daniels always wondered about her birth mother and wondered if her mother was yearning for her as well.

Daniels continued to ask questions while growing up, but she was never given a full answer to any of her questions. She only managed to glean bits and pieces of information that gave her hope she was still on the trail.

Katherine Wimberly, a friend of Daniels, started helping her search for her mother nearly 15 years ago.

Recently, Wimberly needed to take some time away from her job following an injury, and used that free time to conduct a more thorough search.

She told Daniels, "I am going to find your mom."

The process took approximately three weeks working with Web sites such as Ancestry.com

Wimberly sent letters to two families in Salinas. One family replied, sending Daniels an e-mail that asked questions about her father and grandmother, gave their names and provided other key information, she said.

After responding to the email, Daniels said she finally received a telephone call on April 30. Finally, the mother and her daughter were able to speak to each other for the first time in 35 years.

Two hours after the phone call ended, Daniels and Wimberly decided to drive to Salinas, arriving outside Hillman's house at 2 a.m. Waiting for them on the porch was her mother.

Daniels recalls now that her mother looked very similar to the memories she had as a young child. For the remainder of that early Friday morning until the following day, the two women sat and talked without bothering to sleep, Daniels said.

The women quickly realized that neither had ever quit looking for the other, never quit praying for each other or stopped wondering what was happening to the other.

In addition to her mother, Daniels also found a huge extended family of grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers and sister that had never stopped thinking about her as well.

"They all welcomed me with open arms. I knew then, that I wasn't the forgotten child that was absent growing up. Though I was missing, they never stopped thinking about me or loving me," Daniels said.

Amazingly, Daniels and her mother have the same tastes in many things. They enjoy the same types of music, the same authors, dancing in the kitchen, collecting wind chimes. Both women even use the same expressions and have similar mannerisms.

"As we sat and talked and relatives came to visit, the memories that I thought I was imagining as a child started all coming back to me," Daniels recalls.

"They were real; the tight hugs from my grandfather, the sound of voices and so many other things (that happened) before I was taken," she explained.

"I feel as if I have barely touched the iceberg with all that has happened, all that is happening. I am looking forward to learning more about my family, getting in trouble for missing a birthday, and sharing the holidays with my family," said Daniels.

"I feel like a completely different person," she added. "I am whole now and at peace with things."

Daniels and her mother also share a similar philosophy.

Dreams can come true. There is always hope. It doesn't matter how many years have gone by, you can still find someone you love.

As for special occasions such as Mother's Day, Daniels knows that she will never again have to spend it away from her mother.

There are also many firsts yet to come for Hillman and Daniels, and for Daniels' two children, Dusty Havens and Trevor Roberts.