Woman Finds Biological Mom 50 Years After Being Placed for Adoption

"It felt so wonderful to put my arms around her again,” Angela Saucier, 68, tells PEOPLE about finally meeting her daughter Winona Nagy

Nearly 50 years after she placed her baby for adoption amid pressure from her mother, Angela Saucier and her biological daughter have been reunited.

“She told me I couldn't come home with a baby,” Angela, 68, a resident of Egan, Louisiana, recalls of her mother to PEOPLE. “I was in a place where I didn't know anyone and didn't have any family. At 18, I couldn't imagine what to do.”

Over the next five decades, during which time she became a mother to three children, Angela never forgot her eldest daughter.

Angela's story now has a happy ending. Earlier this month, Angela met her biological daughter, Winona Nagy, thanks to her youngest daughter Wesley Saucier, who used a MyHeritage DNA test kit.

“When I first started searching, these options weren't available to us,” Angela says. “The DNA sites — MyHeritage — these things weren't even available [back then]. I didn't know about them when Wesley started pursuing these things.”

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As a teenager in the early 1970s, Angela was living in a difficult home environment in Louisiana with her mother, stepfather and siblings.

“I guess I probably was afraid to bring [my baby] into that,” she says.

Angela acknowledges that she was in denial during the early part of her pregnancy at the time. “When it became a reality, it was just handled so quickly that I didn't have much time to think about it."

She was later sent to a facility for unwed mothers in Texas, where she gave birth. It was there that Angela says she "had time to realize that I was having a baby and that I was not going to be able to raise her. And yes, I did want to be able to take her home, but I didn't have a home to go to.”

Since it was a closed adoption, the facility would only offer Angela general information on the baby's progress with her new family. She was told “about how well she did in school, that she had an older brother who was also adopted, just soothing my mind that she was doing well and succeeding and it sounded like she had a strong family.”

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“I asked [the facility] about when she turned 18, if she was interested [in a possible connection],” continues Angela, “and they put up a lot of walls and they weren't forthcoming or helpful. But I did search. I did go into a lot of sites and post date of birth and information hoping one day she would be looking too, and we might connect.”

Related: N.Y. Girl, 5, Adopted by Family Who Fostered Her for Almost 2,000 Days: 'We're Very Blessed'

Before Angela got married in her late 20s, she gave birth to a boy with Down syndrome who later died at the age of 2 following health issues. She and her now ex-husband later became the parents of a daughter, Wesley, as well as a son.

“When they were old enough to understand,” Angela says of her two surviving kids, “they knew that I had a daughter that I was always hoping someday that I'd see again.”

Meanwhile, Winona, the baby that Angela placed for adoption, was adopted by an Air Force officer and his wife. The family moved around a lot, she tells PEOPLE, until her father retired to Texas where they later opened a coffee shop. Winona, 49, who now lives in College Station, Texas, says that she knew from an early age that she was adopted.

“My mom was always great about telling me what an act of love it was,” Winona says. “And that it meant that Angela, whose name I now know, loved me very much, and it wasn't a case of not being wanted... I felt just doubly loved. I was always curious about Angela, but never angsty about it.”

Angela's youngest daughter, Wesley, 33, played a pivotal role in reuniting her mom and Winona. “I don't know which came first,” Wesley tells PEOPLE, “my love of Scooby-Doo or my mom's story about my missing sister, but the two are pretty close together. I like mystery-solving stuff, so it makes sense that this is what I would end up doing.”

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Wesley, who lives in Bentonville, Arkansas, had previously used a DNA kit to learn about the heritage of her father, who himself was adopted. She took that raw file containing the DNA information and uploaded it to MyHeritage, the online genealogy platform, in 2020. “A few days later, I got the results back and I had one close family member match," she says. "On all the [other] sites that I had uploaded my stuff, I never had a close match that wasn't my mom or grandma."

She continues, "I clicked on the name and I said, 'I don't know who that is, but I know I'm missing a half-sister.' The estimated family match actually was a niece and aunt relationship, but when you clicked 'more,' it said 'half-sister.' And I was like, 'Well, I got one of those somewhere.'”

After some more digging, Wesley came up with a date of birth of her half-sister and needed Angela to confirm it.

“I told her I had been doing some research,” Wesley remembers about the conversation with her mother, “and I said, I had found some people and so I needed one more thing to make sure it was right, and that was the date of birth. She gave it to me and I had this weight like, 'Oh my gosh, I did it.' The coolest moment of my entire life was being able to tell her that I found her other daughter.”

“I held my breath after she asked me about the date of birth,” recalls Angela. “Then she said, 'I found her.' I started crying... It was so unbelievable. I was so happy.”

Coincidentally, Winona's parents encouraged their daughter to take the MyHeritage DNA test. Recalling when she was contacted by Wesley about the match, Winona says, “I was still blown away... I sat there with the phone and cried before I responded to her. But yeah, I mean, I was thrilled... I love being able to say I have a sister."

Both Angela and Winona's initial contact included text messages. A planned reunion between the two was postponed when Angela fell ill. Then about two years later, on Dec. 9, Angela and Winona finally met in person in College Station and embraced.

“I was not nervous,” says Winona. “The hugs felt like people I'd known my whole life."

“The first time I heard Angela's voice on the phone,” she continues, “it was very familiar and very comforting. No awkwardness, no uncomfortableness. It was really lovely. We went and had coffee. I think we could have talked all day, if we didn't have other things to do.”

“I only got to hold her once before I had to sign papers and get myself sent back home,” adds Angela. “There's that feeling of emptiness, your arms are empty. It felt so wonderful to put my arms around her again.”

Related: Woman Meets Biological Son She Never Knew Existed — All Thanks to DNA Test: 'Instant Love'

Angela credits Wesley for making it all possible. ”I didn't know anything about uploading in MyHeritage ... So if she hadn't been on her search, I don't know how long it would've taken for us to find each other. And if Winona's parents hadn't had [their children] test for their benefit... I owe them such a debt of gratitude. We had the opportunity to meet during our meeting. We all had lunch together, and it was wonderful.”

As for whether she will meet Angela again after their recent in-person reunion, Winona replies: “We're not going to have a reunion, we're going to have relationships.”

“You hit the nail on the head,” Angela adds. 

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