AmberJean Hyde of Gadsden set out to help her mother, Elsie Gamblin, find her father, using skills from her job as a private investigator and the growing availability of genetic information for such genealogic research.

While she initially worked to locate a member of her own family, she found a passion for helping others find missing relatives, and revealing family ties that people knew nothing about.

After locating family members of her own in Maine, Hyde’s work in genetic genealogy was far from over. 

She’s worked with many people, most contacted through DNA Detectives or other social media pages. She’s advised and supported their searches, and in an estimated 75 instances, Hyde helped find the family member for them.

Some had given up hope of finding answers on their own, and Hyde offered her help in unraveling long-held family secrets. Here are a couple of examples:

Brittany Buckley’s story

When Brittany Buckley used Ancestry.com, something didn’t add up. For 36 years, she’d been told who her father was, but the DNA told a different story.

She sat down with her mom, and learned why. An encounter at an out-of-state party was the reason for her conception.

“It was the ’80s,” Buckley said. “There were no cellphones” — no easy, immediate way to get someone’s contact information and keep it. “She lost track of him.”

Buckley said she tried to find that trail for about two years through genetic genealogy, but it’s hard to navigate genetic information if you’re not tuned into it. She made a post about her lack of success with her search on a Facebook page, and gave up the quest.

The post caught Hyde’s eye and she contacted Buckley, saying she’d like to help.

“I was skeptical at first,” Buckley said, wondering, “What’s the catch?” But she checked into the situation enough to feel secure in sharing information with Hyde, who went to work and was able to reach some family members.

“She connected dots I couldn’t put together,” Buckley said. “I just wish I’d known her 30 years earlier.”

AMBERJEAN HYDE’S STORY: An 80-year-old secret and a passion for bringing families together discovered through DNA

Within three weeks, Hyde had identified Buckley’s father — but tragically, he’d died just 10 months before.

He was from Los Angeles, Buckley said, while her mother lived in Indiana, as she does now. She’s in contact with her father’s siblings and other family members.

Still, it’s been a great experience for Buckley. “I’ve gained a whole new family,” she said, and she has answers for her four sons about where they came from, on her father’s side.

Buckley now considers Hyde like a sister now. “I still don’t know what she did,” she said, to find her father. She’s just grateful making a connection with Hyde connected her to the rest of her family.

Hyde is now helping Buckley’s niece, researching a similar situation.

Jennifer Roberts’ story

Jennifer Roberts learned when she was 17 that the man she’d been told was her father was not her biological father. She began her search with little to go on other than scattered memories from decades earlier, and did an Ancestry.com DNA test.

“I just sat on the results for a year,” Roberts recalled.

When she found out she was going to have a child of her own, it spurred her to find her unknown parent. “I knew some day she’d have questions,” she said.

Roberts tried to sort through her results, doing research to learn about genetic genealogy, but it was pretty overwhelming. “I didn’t know anything,” she said.

There were a multitude of matches of varying degrees, and she had no way to tell which were on her mother’s side and which were on her father’s.

Roberts said she reached out to some third and fourth cousins who tried to help, working with her to figure out how they were related on her father’s side. One of them suggested she check out the DNA Detectives Facebook page — where many people conducting searches offer each other advice and support.

“I’m typically shy. I don’t put things out there,” Roberts said.

This time she did, sharing her story and how she wanted to find her father, and why. She posted her story in December, and Hyde sent her a message, offering to help.

Roberts said she checked Hyde out online, and determined from stories of others she’d helped that her offer of help, free of charge, was legit. She gave Hyde the passwords to access her genealogy information.

‘DNA SEARCH ANGEL’: AmberJean Hyde helps woman track her father to New Zealand, find a sister

“A week later she called to tell me she’d found my father,” Roberts said. “To say I was shocked is an understatement.”

Roberts said she tried to add her father on Facebook, but because of his privacy settings he didn’t see her request. So, she contacted an aunt.

Before long, she got a phone call. After 30 years, she talked to her father for the first time.

He’s talked to her every day since, Roberts said.

“He had no idea I existed,” she said. “He said if he’d known, he would have been part of my life.”

Roberts, formerly of Gadsden, lives in Huntsville. Her father and other newly found family members live in Florida.

She met her father in person for the first time in February, and they continue making up for lost time, building a relationship.

Roberts credited Hyde’s help with bringing them together. She found  genetic information is not necessarily easy to unravel, and without Hyde’s offer of help, she doesn’t think she would have managed to find her father, certainly not as quickly as he was located.

As Hyde found during the search for her mother’s father, the passage of time can be an enemy when it comes to bringing families together.

Contact Gadsden Times reporter Donna Thornton at 256-393-3284 or donna.thornton@gadsdentimes.com.