Ontario woman's 30-year search for her biological dad leads her to family she never knew

Even as a child, Erica Cowie knew she was different.

She was the only one of her sisters with curly hair and brown eyes. Her skin was darker, her features strikingly dissimilar from those of her two siblings. 

And, despite being raised to believe she was related to both her parents, Cowie sensed it wasn't the reality, and that her biological father was actually someone else — so for more than three decades, she asked questions and searched for the truth.

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"I asked and asked, but it wasn't until I was 27 years old and did a DNA test and found the father who had so lovingly raised me wasn't my biological father," she says.

But if he wasn't, then who was?

That revelation came 10 years ago. Throughout the next decade, Cowie kept probing, researching, and hitting dead ends, including a possible biological father she ruled out through another paternity test. 

Then, earlier this year, Cowie — who's now 38 and married with two kids in the town of Newcastle, Ont. — made a breakthrough: A DNA test through an ancestry website showed she had Portuguese heritage, which lined up with a man from her mother's past named Paul De Freitas.

'A piece of my heart is missing'

Armed with a name and photos, she posted in a nearly 25,000-member Canadian mom Facebook group last May, sharing the story of her search. "A piece of my heart is missing," she pleaded.

Less than 24 hours later, a message popped up in her inbox. "I can't believe this is happening," wrote Vanessa Costa, "but Paul is my uncle."

Costa, Cowie's cousin, put Cowie in touch with her mom, Cecilia De Freitas — Cowie's aunt and biological father's sister.

"My next thought was, he's not even here to see this," says De Freitas. She broke the tragic news: Paul De Freitas died four years ago, never knowing he had a daughter.

It could have been the end of Cowie's 30-year search. But instead, De Freitas and dozens of her other newfound family members embraced their long-lost relative.

"I was expecting that she was going to be as beautiful as she is," De Freitas says, sitting with Cowie in the living room of her Vaughan, Ont. home. "And I said, 'Wow, I can't believe the resemblance. The hair, the face, the skin, the eyes, everything — like my brother.'"

Since the two connected, Cowie has attended a family reunion, meeting uncles, aunts, cousins, and a nonagenarian grandmother she never knew existed right in the same province.

Cowie's arrival 'a gift' to her family

She's also learned more about her father, a nature-loving hairdresser with a passion for adventure that took him from Ontario to California to Hawaii. His globetrotting spirit hit home for Cowie; at 18, she ventured out on her own for a decade, travelling the world as a dancer on cruise ships.

Cowie's arrival in the family has helped them as well, says her aunt. Paul De Freitas's death, she explains, left a hole in the tight-knit family.

Meeting Cowie, she says, is "a gift that helps us to heal."

Meanwhile, Cowie says she feels at ease after finally finding the other part of her family that had been a mystery for so many years, even though she won't get to talk to the dad she'd been yearning to meet.

"All I know is I'd hug him so tight I would never let go," she says.

"I'd tell him I love him — and thank you for giving me life."