DATE: Tuesday, September 9, 1997            TAG: 9709090031

SECTION: DAILY BREAK             PAGE: E1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ELIZABETH SIMPSON, STAFF WRITER    

                                            LENGTH:  153 lines

LOST & FOUND A MOTHER'S SEARCH FOR SON SHE GAVE UP 37 YEARS AGO ENDS QUICKLY AFTER SHE FINDS HELP VIA THE INTERNET.

IT WAS 1960 in a Florida hospital that Emily Pickering gave birth to a baby she never got a chance to see.

He was whisked away before she could cradle his head with her hand, before she could breathe in the boy's new-baby smell.

Decades later, the Norfolk woman wanted to find her birth son but figured it would take tramping through Florida courthouses, tracking down doctors, perusing records in a state far from her own.

It wasn't until the day after his 37th birthday in June, that Pickering decided to try to find him, and she didn't have to go far. She simply sat down at her computer, logged onto the Internet and typed in the word ``adoption'' on a World Wide Web search.

What she found was a dizzying array of resources that have cropped up since the popularization of the Internet: Mailing lists where she could get guidance on a search. Registries designed to reunite birth families. And a national network of searchers who help track down ``lost'' family and friends. It is a system that has helped some people reunite with loved ones but frustrated others with high fees and broken promises.

However, Pickering got lucky. Within two months of starting the search, she had a fax in her hand with her birth son's telephone number in Rockledge, Fla. Another birth mother she had e-mailed linked her up with a private investigator who did the legwork and offered to send the name of the birth son for $400.

``I couldn't believe how quickly it happened,'' Pickering said. ``I want to get the word out to my fellow birth mothers not to lose hope.''

Pickering is one of thousands of people who are using the Internet to track down family and friends separated over years by adoption, divorce, family breakup or a simple move out of the neighborhood. Organizations that help people reunite with birth families say only a small percentage of people find their biological families directly on the Internet, but the access to resources there has done a number of things:

It's given more people the incentive to start a search and made the search faster and, in many cases, cheaper. And it has put people in touch with professional and volunteer searchers in cities and towns where children were placed for adoption. They in turn help link up people who are searching for one another.

Both the individuals who are looking for people and the people who are helping them often use huge computer databases that include telephone directories, motor vehicle records and voter registration rolls to conduct a search.

But like many things involving the Internet, the cyberspace link has also raised concerns: About the confidentiality of people who don't want to be found. About people who may bungle a relationship by attempting a reunion without the proper counseling and guidance. And about people getting ripped off by unscrupulous searchers who charge exorbitant fees - in some cases, thousands of dollars - without delivering on the deal.

``Anyone who makes a guarantee is lying,'' said Joe Soll, founder of the Council for Equal Rights in Adoption, a New York City-based organization that helps people reunite with birth families. ``If they try to promise you something, that's an alert.''

Many searchers are adoptees and birth parents themselves and help others for free or for what it cost them to make the search, but others are out to make some money.

``I've heard of people paying $3,000, $6,000, even $10,000 for a search,'' said Bertie Hunt, the Florida investigator who helped Pickering find her birth son. ``It's because so many people who are searching are hurting and vulnerable. They think they've exhausted all the possibilities.''

For Pickering, $400 to find her birth son was a bargain.

Pickering was 16 years old when she found out she was pregnant. Her father was a professor at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. The father of the baby was a student at the university.

``It was a shameful thing at that time, a big scandal,'' Pickering said.

Her father died of a heart attack about a month after she told him, and she was sent to Coral Gables, Fla., to stay with a widow until she had the baby, an arrangement set up by the family doctor.

When the baby was born June 14, 1960, Pickering was heavily sedated and never got a chance to see or hold him.

She went on to marry and have three more children. Although she always wondered about the baby she put up for adoption, she didn't try to find him for fear of disrupting his life. Her birth son, Keith Brockhouse, meanwhile, didn't search for his biological mother for the same reason.

But when her birth son turned 37, Pickering figured it was time to try to locate him. ``I figured he had reached the age of reasoning, a place where he could handle this,'' Pickering said.

She first sent messages to other birth mothers who had conducted searches. She also listed her name on some online registries set up to help people find one another.

Through various e-mail messages with other birth mothers, she learned about Hunt, an Orlando, Fla., private investigator who specializes in reuniting families. Pickering asked Hunt for her help. Hunt is also certified by the state of Florida to conduct searches.

Hunt, who started tracking birth families when she found out in 1991 that she was adopted, won't divulge exactly how she found Brockhouse, but it only took her two weeks.

She advises people who are searching to first try the obvious means. Many states, such as Virginia, have systems set up where birth parents can contact the social services department or the adoption agency where a child was placed for adoption. They can place a letter and information about how to be reached, and if the birth child requests the information, it will be passed on to him or her.

Adoptees can contact birth parents in the same way, if the birth parent tells the agency they want to get in touch with the child. Adoptees can also get ``non-identifying'' information about birth parents.

Hunt says that when that option doesn't work, people should try to find a searcher who is reputable.

Many volunteer searchers, like Lynette Dooley of Dinwiddie, will help guide adoptees and birth families on searches for free. ``Adoptees shouldn't have to pay for their heritage,'' Dooley said in an e-mail message. ``They've already paid enough.''

The day after Pickering sent Hunt a check for $400, she got a fax with her birth son's telephone number on it.

She called Brockhouse, who is a builder and developer, at the Rockledge office where he's president. He was in a meeting, but his secretary quickly got him on the phone.

``It was a remarkable surprise,'' Brockhouse remembers. ``It floored me. I was thrilled.''

For 24 hours he couldn't think of anything else. He sat down to write Pickering a letter that read, in part: ``I have always known about you and been taught to revere and admire you for your courage and self-sacrifice. Yet I have always been reluctant to act on my desire to find you for fear that I might by my mere existence compromise or even destroy whatever life you had made for yourself.'' He ended the letter with, ``Thank you for finding me; thank you for having me; thank you most of all for loving me.''

A month later, the two saw one another for the first time when Brockhouse flew from Florida to Norfolk to meet Pickering and her family.

``I had never known anyone who had my eyes like mine,'' said Brockhouse, who gave his birth mother a topaz bracelet upon meeting her. ``It fulfilled a need that I didn't even realize I had.''

Brockhouse said he's always had concerns about the Internet and the access it sometimes provides into people's private lives. But he said in this particular case, it worked in his favor.

He said his adoptive father died in 1991, but his adoptive mother was thrilled that he has met his birth mother. ``My mom knew she earned her right to be called Mom,'' Brockhouse said. ``She thinks it's wonderful.''

Pickering hopes to stay in touch with her birth son, and she probably will, because her youngest son, 26-year-old Matthew, recently moved to Florida to work for Brockhouse.

No matter how the relationship develops, her curiosity about her birth son has been put to rest.

``The idea that there is someone out there you have never seen who you bore and loved is hard to live with,'' Pickering said. ``I'm a crusader now. People are coming to me to help them find their children.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos

IAN MARTIN/The Virginian-Pilot

Courtesy of Emily Pickering

Emily Pickering of Norfolk was reunited recently with her son Keith

Brockhouse... KEYWORDS: ADOPTIONS INTERNET

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