Siblings passed each other for years before finding out they are related: 'My world is complete now'

Christina Sadberry spent more than a decade searching for her biological family, completely oblivious to the fact that she had been walking past a sibling in the hallways at Fort Worth's Cook Children's Medical Center for seven years. Sadberry was adoped when she was 3 months old, and raised in Austin, Texas. Although she started looking for her birth family in 2006 and did eventually manage to track down her birth mother, she wasn't able to learn anything about who her biological father was or if she had any siblings. Her mom "pretty much said that only her and her mom knew about me and she just kind of left it at that," the 42-year-old told PEOPLE.

A few years later, in 2014, Sadberry took a 23andMe test in the hopes of finding more of her biological family. However, all she matched with were distant cousins. "I was like, 'Okay, nobody is ever going to show up,'" she recalled thinking. Little did she know, what she sought would come seeking her a few years later. In 2021, Raymond Turner's wife, Maria, gifted him a 23andMe test for Christmas. Raymond—who was raised by his maternal grandmother in Hempstead, Texas, along with his younger brother—knew about a younger half-brother and a step-sister prior to taking the test. However, he had no clue that he had a biological sister also.

By taking the test, he hoped to learn where in Africa his family was from and maybe plan a roots trip. "I thought it'd be great for us to finally solve this mystery together," Turner recalled. When he received the results of the test on St Patrick's Day, he was stunned by the results. "I said, 'This can't be. This is wrong,'" Turner said of finding out he had a biological sister. "I was about to write off the whole thing thinking it was a big mistake." Instead, he reached out to Sadberry. "I started shaking and got chills and freaking out and my heart started racing," she said of the moment she learned she had a brother.

Eventually, the siblings learned that they have the same biological father. They also discovered that their paths had likely crossed many times over the last seven years. Sadberry's 11-year-old son Bryson has a kidney disorder, nephrotic syndrome, and has been going to Cook children's hospital—where Turner works as a recording studio producer—since spring 2015. According to Sadberry, there were probably at least 15 or 20 times over the years when they were at the hospital at the same time without knowing. However, the first time she noticed Turner was just hours before the siblings learned the truth.

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Sadberry had taken her son to the hospital for a check-up that morning and while stopping to look at the LEGO sculpture, she noticed a man in a red shirt playing the keyboard inside the studio. That man was Turner. "It's unexplainable. Like you can't make that up," she said. "My husband keeps saying, 'This is some stuff out of a movie.'" The siblings' official first meeting was at the hospital on March 25. "Hugging him felt like home," Sadberry said. "Just to be around him felt like home." They felt like they found the "puzzle piece" that had been missing, Raymond shared, recalling his wife telling him at the time: "Your heart knew that there was still another part of you out there."

"My world is complete now," said Sadberry, who is a Master Sergeant in the Air Force Reserve. "This is what I was missing." Meanwhile, Turner revealed that their friendship and connection have inspired others to do DNA testing to try and find more family. "There's a homing device in each of our souls that wants to find home. Who I am, where do I fit into this crazy world? How am I connected to this person?" he said. "I think those answers are necessary to find out more of who you are and you might be surprised along the way. There's such a completeness when that puzzle piece fits into place. I'm just excited to get to know more about her. Find out more quirky things that we have in common and just enjoy what God has brought together."

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