Michigan delivery man adopted 22 years ago learns the woman he’d searched for all his life was his co-worker

When 27-year-old Steve Flaig started working as a delivery driver at the Lowe's in Grand Rapids, Michigan, he thought he might pick up some home improvement tips or maybe find a good deal or two on tools. What he never expected was that one of his co-workers, a woman he occasionally passed in the hallway with nothing more than a polite "Hey," would turn out to be his birth mother, the woman he had been searching for over four years.

Her name was Christine Tallady, now 45, and she had placed Flaig for adoption as a young single woman. She left her records open at the adoption agency in the hope that her son would reach out one day. "Passing each other, it was just, 'Hey.' I didn’t really have a lot of contact with him," she told TODAY. Flaig began his search at 18 with the encouragement of his adoptive parents, contacting the agency that had handled his adoption. He learned that his birth mother’s name was on file, but things only changed once he returned to the agency and discovered that he had been misspelling her last name.

With the correct spelling, an online search turned up a "Christine Tallady" living not far from his own home, and just minutes from the Lowe's where he worked. At first, he thought she might be a customer, but two months before their reunion, he learned that she worked in the very same store. "It’s a bizarre situation, and I was not 100 percent sure what to do about it," he said, adding, "There’s always that fear that it could potentially go wrong, so I had to be 100 percent sure before I went ahead with it." Unsure how to approach her, he turned back to the adoption agency, where a staff member offered to make the call on his behalf.

When Tallady heard her son’s first name and learned he worked at Lowe's, she was in shock. "I just sat down and started crying. I said, 'You’ve got to be kidding me,'" she said. Once she confirmed his birthday, she knew it was him. Reunions like this are often deeply transformative. A 2018 study by researcher Gary Clapton, which examined 200 adoption matches over a decade in Scotland, found that such reunions frequently reshape identity, strengthen emotional well-being, and expand family connections in profound ways.

They met for lunch at a nearby restaurant. "He got out of his seat, and we just hugged and hugged and cried and cried. It was very emotional," Tallady said. For her, seeing how well he had been raised was the greatest relief. "He’s just a really good person." Flaig described it as filling "something that’s just kind of missing in your life." The joy of the reunion spread to more than just the two of them. Tallady’s husband had always known about her first child, and her children — Alexandra, 12, and Brandon, 10 — were thrilled to discover they had an older brother. "They’re so excited… They are just ecstatic," she said. His roommate, Joel Brinks, also noticed the difference in his demeanor. "He’s infinitely happier. He constantly has a smile on his face and seems a lot more excited than he has been in a long time," he said.