She doesn't think her parents ever planned to tell her she was adopted, but it came out when her mother was going through the process of becoming a U.S. citizen.

Howell was about 11 years old at the time. Both her parents died a few years later, when she was a teenager.

Howell didn't know anything about her birth mother, not even the woman's name. She tried over the years to find out more but came up empty until recently when a relative used her birth name in an internet search.

Thousands of miles away in Canada, a great nephew of Marian North Brown -- Howell's birth mother -- was doing an online search of his own. He knew Brown had given a child up for adoption and wanted to see if he could track down the long-lost relative.

The searchers happened on each other. In no time, Howell was on the phone with Schulties, 59, of Saskatchewan, one of her seven younger half-brothers and sisters.

Too bad it doesn't always turn out so well.

Synchronicity strikes again!