ROBERT: I'm Robert Krulwich.

JAD: This is Radiolab. Our topic today is ...

ROBERT: Sperm, actually.

JAD: That's right.

ROBERT: And what is a sperm, if not one teeny-tiny little dad?

JAD: Oh, it's much more than that.

ROBERT: Well ...

JAD: It's the soul. It's everything.

ROBERT: [laughs] Well, we're gonna just leave you in the garage. And turn to Kathleen LaBounty, who a few years ago sat down to try to draw a picture of her dad, and this is the picture that she drew.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I drew a picture of a sperm. It wasn't very impressive. [laughs] It was like a cartoon sperm with blue eyes and brown hair and a little bit of a mustache. And then I had a really big question mark behind the sperm. And that was to represent the fact that I don't know this man's identity.

ROBERT: This might sound like your typical magic marker paints a sperm donor story. But it's really not. And here to tell us about it is reporter Ari Daniel Shapiro.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Should I just kind of take it from the top?

ROBERT: Yeah.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Okay. Kathleen lives in Houston.

ROBERT: Mm-hmm.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And when she was eight, her mom began telling her rather repeatedly, "Kathleen, there's something special about you."

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: And I really wasn't that curious, but she kept saying it so many times that eventually I just said, "Okay, what is it that makes me different?" So she took me upstairs, sat me on my bed, and she just said that the man who raised you is not your biological father. We had to go to a sperm bank, and that a very nice man gave us his sperm so that you could be born. And then she said that I could still consider my dad to be my father, even though he wasn't my biological father. Right afterwards, I just ran downstairs and I threw my arms around my dad's neck and he was on the computer, and I just told him that I loved him, and he didn't know that I had just been told that I wasn't his biological daughter.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: So she just took it in, and it was a source of joy for her initially.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: It felt kind of magical.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: It felt magical.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Yeah, it was just unique.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Yeah.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: It didn't completely sink in at first.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Things started to change as she got older. She just became aware of all these things that were different ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: ... between me and my family.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Okay, so I've got the picture out of me and my cousins.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: So in family photos I kind of don't blend in.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: The obvious thing is my height. I'm 5'2", and all of my cousins are between 5'10" and 6'5".

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Wow!

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: [laughs] Yeah.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: So that's like a foot taller?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Right. So that was one thing.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And then there were lots of other things, like, she had blue eyes, whereas the rest of her family had ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: ... mainly brown.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And she had these drawing abilities.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: My mom, she can barely draw stick figures.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: She is a vegetarian.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I'm the only one in my family, and so I was kind of wondering if that desire to take care of anything living maybe came from him. I just became more curious about how this man contributed to who I am.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: What did you know about him?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: The only information that I got is that he attended Baylor College of Medicine.

ROBERT: Baylor is where?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Texas.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: In 1981, when I was conceived. But I don't know if he was a first-year or second, third, or fourth-year student.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And that's it?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Correct.

ROBERT: That was—that's not very much.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Yeah. So when she was a teenager, she contacted the clinic ... KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: ... trying to request medical records. And I was told that they were destroyed years ago.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Hmm.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I feel like I lost part of me.

ROBERT: So can she solve this in any way? What is she gonna do?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Well, one night, when she was in college, and this was a few years later, her mom just happened to be watching TV.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: Every year, 30,000 children are born in this country to mothers who have been artificially inseminated with sperm from an anonymous donor.]

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And she saw a special ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: ... about the Donor Sibling Registry.

[ARCHIVE CLIP: ... a place called the DonorSiblingRegistry.com]

ROBERT: Oh, it's a website?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: It's a website.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: To try to help donors and donor offspring and half-siblings find each other.

[NEWS CLIP: CBS News 60 Minutes.]

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: So after my mother saw this show, I decided to register.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: So she logged on ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: ... pressed "clinic" ...

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: ... and she put into the search engine, "Baylor College of Medicine."

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Baylor College of Medicine.

ROBERT: And?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: And there was actually a girl around my age ...

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: A young woman named Jessica.

ROBERT: Which means they could be, uh ...

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Sisters.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: So she and I got in touch and started to talk.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Right away, they noticed that they had a lot of things in common.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: We both have polycystic ovarian syndrome.

ROBERT: Which is...?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Which is a genetic syndrome that you would inherit.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: And we were on the exact same medication and the same dosage.

ROBERT: Oh!

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And that seemed like more than a coincidence.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Just kind of sparked our curiosity.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And so they decided that they would meet up.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: She came and spent a weekend with me. By the time she left, we had come up with a list of 100 similarities.

ROBERT: A hundred?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: On our list, we had that we can't roll our tongues. Both born in 1982. We both have curly hair. We both had high cholesterol. We don't have any sense of direction.

ROBERT: Oh, I know what this is. This is what you do when you want something to be true.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: We both had butterfly tattoos.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Absolutely.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: We have the same taste in music.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: When you, I think, want to believe ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: We're both very thoughtful ...

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: ... all these things that would otherwise I think maybe escape detection ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: We found that our handwriting was pretty similar.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: ... all of a sudden become really important.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: It just goes on and on.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: So they decide to have a DNA test.

ROBERT: And?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And the results come back ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: They called her and then she called me. I mean, you can hear people's disappointment and sadness, so I knew before she said anything. I think it was a .001 percent probability that we were sisters.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Just like that, this possibility was gone.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I began to feel loss and grief. Like I look in the mirror and I see a stranger looking back at me.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Okay, so, fast forward now a couple of years. She goes to a library.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: A library in the medical center.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: She walks over to the stacks, pulls out ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: The old Baylor yearbooks.

ROBERT: The old Baylor what?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Yearbooks. She figured, as long as he showed up to get his picture taken on picture day, he'd be in one of those books.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Exactly.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: So ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I took them off the shelf and I photocopied every page in those yearbooks. The 1979, 1980, '81, '82, '83, and '84 yearbooks.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: And she took them home.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I was expecting to flip through it and not see any similarities with any of the men and then get to one picture and think, "Okay, this is the man." But that's definitely not what happened. [laughs]

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Instead ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I realized that I look like dozens if not hundreds of the men. And I would think that I had one man's nose and another man's eyes and another man's chin.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Even this guy. I mean, I think it's possible because of the rounded eyebrows and bigger eyes.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I just got overwhelmed.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: So she decided to enlist some help.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Right. So I had my mom and three of my closest friends take sticky tabs and flip through the photos of all the men. They might say, "Well, you kind of look like this man," or, "You kind of look like this other man." And then they would mark the men who they thought resembled me the most.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: She then decided she would draft a letter.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: A letter. 

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: "'Dear Doctor: It is after much thought that I am contacting you.'"

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I was thinking, "Well, I'll write the men who were consistently picked out."

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: "I was conceived May 4, 1981, by an anonymous sperm donation through a Baylor College of Medicine Student."

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I tried to think, "Okay, if I were a donor, what would my concerns be?"

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: "I want to assure you that I am emotionally stable and financially secure. To provide additional reassurance to donors, I have been using a non-legally binding DNA test that cannot be used in court."

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: And then I just explained. I think I—I tried to give an overview of who I am.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: "I have large, almost navy blue eyes. I barely reach 5'2'. Both my mother and I have A positive blood. I am attaching my photograph to see if you recognize my face."

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: And then I just said, "Thank you for your time. Sincerely, Kathleen."

ROBERT: And so she actually sends it out, the letter?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Yeah.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: A round of 25 letters ...

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: To the men that looked most like her.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Another round of 50. My biggest fear was that my letters would not be acknowledged. I had been told for so long that my donor wouldn't want to know about me, he wouldn't care that I exist. I mean, I thought if I sent out 25 letters, maybe one would take the time to respond to me.

ROBERT: Did she get anything back?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: She did.

ROBERT: What'd they say?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Well, I mean, some of them were what you might expect.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: "Wow. Your letter was unexpected." "Dear Kathleen ..." "Take me off your mailing list and do not ever contact me again."

DANIEL ZAK: I remember, just before my shift started, it was at 10:30 am. I rummaged through the mailbox and saw a letter that was addressed to myself, Dr. Daniel, Zak. I live just outside Seattle, and I remember—I practice emergency medicine—opening the letter and the first sentence or two, I thought, "Uh-oh."

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Oh, see, here's one that's hand-written.

DANIEL ZAK: I wasn't sure that it would be anonymous and that there would be no way for anyone to track me down, even if they wanted to.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: "Though your motivations may be innocent, please consider the ramifications for others by the knowledge you seek."

DANIEL ZAK: I felt that I would never be contacted.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: But then, there were others. Like this guy.

MERRIMON BAKER: I think I called her right away. I'm Merrimon Baker. I'm an orthopedic surgeon who lives in the Houston area. And I said, "Well, I was a donor, I think 25 years ago, and I'd never thought this day would come."

ROBERT: What does that mean?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: He—I wrote this one line down that he said. He said, "That's how really good things happen."

MERRIMON BAKER: You know, that's usually the way really good things happen, they come out of the blue. I'm 51 now and I don't have any kids. You know, not having kids would be the last thing I would've guessed, you know, 35 or 40 years ago, from my own perspective, but I've always been very work-oriented. All of a sudden, you kind of look up and, you know, a few years have passed by and you don't have any kids yet, so, the prospect of having, you know, a daughter out there somewhere that I didn't know about was—was, quite frankly, kind of a rush.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: He called me and we just talked about interests and our personality, and we started finding similarities.

MERRIMON BAKER: Her mother had requested a blue-eyed donor, which I am. She has A positive blood, which would be compatible with mine. And it gets even more eerie.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Like the fact that we had both studied psychology.

MERRIMON BAKER: Psychology, my major in college.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: And ...

MERRIMON BAKER: ... our cumulative grade point average was identical. She certainly could be my daughter on many fronts. So I spoke with my mother at length. She was extraordinarily excited at the prospect of having a grandchild, and she prepared a place for her at Christmas dinner with her name on it.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Wow.

ROBERT: Did—did they get the DNA test?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Not exactly. They just kept waiting.

MERRIMON BAKER: Probably subconsciously, I almost didn't really want to know.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Right. You know, let's just not even open up the results of the test. Let's just assume that we're—it's a match. We get along so well, why does it matter? But at the same time, we both knew that we needed to know the truth.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: In the end, they finally went through with it.

MERRIMON BAKER: I mean, it was kind of a running lottery about, you know, what do you think? And I was pretty impressed at the fact that it was probably gonna be positive. The results come back from the lab, and it, you know ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: This is what a DNA test looks like. Yellow is basic information.

MERRIMON BAKER: It has this information about this and that in terms of the DNA.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I have no idea what blue, green, gray, pink ... [laughs]

MERRIMON BAKER: And at the bottom it's, you know, kind of yes or no.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: The probability equals zero percent.

MERRIMON BAKER: It was like zero percent chance that it was positive.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: He wrote me, and he said, "I am heartbroken. I am so sorry this was negative." And I think it took him about three or four weeks before he felt up to speaking to me again.

MERRIMON BAKER: Yes. You know, I mean, I've always thought I'd be a good dad, and, you know, I—I guess it was kind of like, it would have been kind of nice to have a child out there who's a well-adjusted, intelligent person. You know, it's kind of all the things you'd want your kid to be.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: And that's what almost made me stop my search.

ROBERT: So did she stop then?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: She does exactly the opposite.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I wrote every single male who went to Baylor from '79 to '84.

ROBERT: Which is how many males?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: 600. Yeah. [laughs] Out of those 600, 250 responded.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Wow.

ROBERT: Wow. Half of them write her back.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Yeah.

ROBERT: That's so weird.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Exactly. That was exactly my reaction.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Weirder still?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Not only did they respond, but they were very supportive. "Dear Ms. LaBounty, You are clearly someone who thinks and feels deeply. That makes you special." One guy sent me a Christmas card. "You sound and look like a remarkable young woman." This one says, "I would claim you in a second." I'm trying to read his handwriting. Doctor's handwriting. "Dear Kathleen, I've waited 26 years to receive a letter like this." This is a man who's actually a friend of mine now. I've met him and I've met his wife. This one's really sweet too.

ROBERT: Wait, well, wait a minute. What about that guy at the beginning that went, "Uh-oh."

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Dr. Dan Zak?

ROBERT: Yeah, him.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: Even he came around.

DANIEL ZAK: As time has progressed since I initially read the letter, now I'm almost sorry that she's not my biologic daughter. That would've been kind of fun.

ROBERT: Hm. And of all those, has anyone else agreed to do a paternity test?

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: All told, she's had 16 DNA tests.

ROBERT: Have they all turned out negative?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Every—every test came back as negative. But I still feel like I probably have the answer in front of me. I just don't know which page is his.

ARI DANIEL SHAPIRO: It just—just, real quick—so I realize it's 12 now. The song, I don't know if you, I mean ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Yes, I was just thinking about that too.

MAN: Go ahead and play some of it.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Okay.

MAN: I just need to get a little ...

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Whenever I've heard "Somewhere Out There," ever since I was a kid, it would remind me of my biological father and that he is out there. When I was a kid, sometimes I would look up at the sky and I would think that I—I literally know nothing about my father except that we were both looking at the exact same sky.

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: Yeah, that's as far as I got.

MAN: What do you mean, that's as far as you got?

KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: I never learned the ending. I'm still working on it. [laughs]

JAD: That story from Ari Daniel Shapiro and Lulu Miller, our producer. Time for a break. Radiolab will continue in a moment.

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[MATTHEW COBB: Support for NPR comes from NPR stations and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, helping NPR advance journalistic excellence in the digital age.]

[KATHLEEN LABOUNTY: The Melville Charitable Trust, supporting efforts to find and fight the causes of homelessness. On the web at MelvilleTrust.org]

[MATTHEW COBB: The Annie E. Casey Foundation, announcing Kids Count, a state-by-state look at child wellbeing and juvenile justice reform. At AECF.org. This is NPR, National Public Radio.]

 

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