Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, April 21, 1994 TAG: 9404210197
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By KEVIN KITTREDGE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BLACKSBURG LENGTH: Medium
Kressierer, 24, recently met her biological father, George Hale, on ``Ricki Lake'' - an afternoon talk show geared toward young adults.
She had found her father earlier after a five-year search, and talked to him on the telephone. But Kressierer, a graduate student at Virginia Tech, said she could not afford the $650 air fare to go to Spokane, Wash., to meet him.
The ``Ricki Lake'' show picked up the tab, flying both of them to New York..
The episode airs at 3 p.m. today on WSLS-Channel 10.
For Kressierer, the taped meeting capped a determined and ultimately successful search for both her biological parents.
With the help of a nationwide computer network of adoptees, whose members routinely help each other with detective work, Kressierer finally located her mother's parents - her grandparents - in New York late last year.
She obtained her mother's phone number by calling them and posing as their daughter's friend.
Then she called the mother she'd never met.
``I asked if it was a good time to talk. I had something personal I wanted to talk about,'' Kressierer recalled this week. ``She said `Yeah, sure.' I told her who I was. I asked if she had given me up for adoption. ...It was really intense''
Her mother, Veronika, warmed to her after the initial shock, and helped Kressierer find her biological father. Kressierer has since talked to him several times, but as a college student could not afford go to Washington to meet him, she said.
Kressierer -- whose adoptive parents live in Ohio -- also was afraid that staying with him, his wife and their two children in Spokane might be stressful all around, she said.
Kressierer heard ``Ricki Lake'' was looking for adoptees to meet their biological parents on camera through a message on the same computer network that had helped her find her biological parents in the first place. By that time, Kressierer already had met her biological mother.
But Kressierer contacted the show, which arranged the meeting with her father.
In addition to meeting Hale, a computer worker, on the air, she spent the next day with him, she said.
Unlike some of the other meetings - the show features four of them - Kressierer said her meeting with her father was reserved. She admits she felt a little shy on camera , although she did give her biological pop a hug.
She said it was a ``very good experience'' -although she fears the ''Ricki Lake'' audience was ``totally bored.''
Kressierer said she wanted to find her biological parents to answer questions about her medical history .
There were other reasons. ``I did want to know why they put me up for adoption,'' she said.
In fact, her parents were children of the '60s who were not at all ready to raise a family, and Kressierer, who ended up in a stable home, is certain they did the right thing.
She said her adoptive parents - her real mother and father in her eyes - were supportive of her search, and she hopes to arrange a meeting between them and her biological mother and father sometime in the future.
Strangest moment? When her biological mother showed up for a visit after the show, and for a minute the three of them stood there together - the family that might have been. Kressierer said her biological parents, who never married, had not see each in years.
``It really, really was weird,'' she said of the reunion. ``I had to go out for a cigarette.''
by CNB