Chilean American Stolen as a Baby Reunites With His Birth Mother 36 Years Later

A Flight 36 Years in the Making

On February 14, 2026, Kyle Adler boarded a plane in Miami and flew to Santiago, Chile. At 36 years old, he was about to meet his mother for the first time.

Adler had been raised in an affluent Chicago suburb by an American family who adopted him in 1990. He had no reason to question his origin story - until DNA testing and a nonprofit organization revealed what the adoption paperwork had never disclosed. He had been stolen from his Chilean family as a nine-month-old infant during the dictatorship of General Augusto Pinochet, according to AP reporting carried by ABC News.

‘It’s been so eye-opening to see who my people are,’ Adler told the AP after the reunion. ‘I feel the love, I feel the compassion, the care - it’s nice to have a family again.’

What Happened Under Pinochet

Adler’s story is painful - but it is not unique. He is one of thousands of children who were taken from Chilean families during Pinochet’s 17-year rule, a period when hospital workers and corrupt officials arranged illegal adoptions that transferred infants to families abroad - often in the United States, Canada, and several European countries. Families were told their babies had died.

Since 2014, nonprofits like Nos Buscamos and Connecting Roots have helped reunite at least 650 people with their Chilean families, using donated DNA testing kits from MyHeritage and a growing database of biological relatives still searching. The work is slow, careful, and ongoing.

The Moment He Landed

Tyler Graf, the founder and CEO of Connecting Roots, traveled with Adler to Chile. Graf had his own reunion years earlier - he too was taken from his Chilean mother and raised abroad - and said his mission now is to bring others home.

When Adler walked off the plane in Santiago and embraced his birth mother, Ana Maria Navarrete, for the first time, the AP photographer captured the moment. The image shows two people holding each other in a way that requires no caption.

‘Now it’s time to mend these families and bring everyone back home so they can see where they came from,’ Graf told the AP.

A Family Brunch and a New Beginning

The reunion continued the next morning at a family brunch - Adler meeting not just his mother but extended family members he never knew existed. He described the experience as ‘eye-opening’ in ways that went beyond family connection, touching something deeper about identity and belonging that he had not known was missing until he found it.

His American adoptive parents had died in 2022. He described them as people who ‘didn’t steal me’ and ‘didn’t act out of malice’ - a careful, compassionate framing that reflects the complexity many adoptees in similar situations navigate when the truth of their origins becomes clear.

The Broader Fight for Justice

The legal dimension of this story is still unfolding. Human rights lawyer Lippert Thyden Gonzalez has filed suit against the Chilean government and is pursuing the case to the Inter-American Court of Human Rights. He also founded a nonprofit, Grafting Hope, focused on educating U.S. lawmakers about survivors of counterfeit adoptions and fighting for their legal recognition and rights.

For Adler, the legal fight is secondary to what he found in Santiago. A mother. A family. A history. And on Valentine’s Day 2026, an embrace that spanned 36 years of distance neither of them chose.

References: Chilean American Stolen as a Baby Reunites With His Mom and Gets a Second Chance at Family | Chilean American Stolen as a Baby Reunites With His Mom | Chilean American Stolen as a Baby Gets Second Chance at Family