A mother has been reunited
with the child she put up for adoption more than two decades ago thanks to
Facebook. Cherie Alvis, 39, from
Lufkin, Texas, decided to launch an appeal for her long-lost son via the social
networking site on June 3 - the day of his 22nd birthday.
Four days after posting a
photograph of her newborn along with a heartfelt plea, she told KLTV that a message popped up on her timeline reading:
'Here I am Mom'. Clark Alldridge, whose
birth name was Joseph Edward Saenz, said he was alerted to the post by a
'complete stranger' called Sherry Riley.
After striking up
conversation via email, he traveled two hours from Houston to meet Ms Alvis for
the first time this past Saturday. He said that he has known he was adopted all
his life. 'It's like 22 years later
you meet your mom,' he said. 'It's like the most amazing thing in the world
really.'
Meanwhile Ms Alvis
captioned a picture of the mother-son reunion on Facebook with the words: 'I am
so glad he's home!! I can't stop staring at him.'
She gave birth to Clark at
the Mainland Medical Center in Texas City when she was 17 years old. He was her
second child.
For four months she tried
to look after him the best she could, but with no fixed accommodation it proved
a struggle. Often she was forced to
sit in the hospital lobby just to keep his milk bottles warm. It was in
December 1991 when his health deteriorated that she decided to look into
adoption.
'It was the hardest
decision I have ever made in my life,' she explained.
'It was something I did
not want to do but it was either give my son life with someone else, another
family that could take care of him and actually give him an opportunity in
life, or to let him die in my arms with me.' That Christmas, Clark's
adoptive parents sent Ms Alvis a photo of him with the message 'our best
Christmas present' scrawled on the back.
She said the gesture
helped steady her emotions.
'I think that they must be
really wonderful people to be able to do that for me 22 years ago and I can't
thank God enough for them.'
Clark also has an adopted
sister and said that his parents have been 'great' in supporting him in
everything he's done. Ms Alvis says she doesn't
want to take anything away from Clark's mom and dad and hopes they can form a
relationship.
'I gave his parents a gift
and 22 years later they gave me a gift back and that is a wonderful, wonderful
young man,' she added.
Clark says that he has
come to terms with his adoption and he admires his mother's bravery. 'She basically had to have
another family keep me alive and I'm proud of her for that,' he said.
'I feel like everybody has
to make hard choices at one point and some are harder than others . . . 'I love
her and I don't even know her.'
He plans on getting to
know his birth mother as much as possible, along with his blood brother and
sister.
Ms Riley, who put the duo
in touch, added: 'I just feel like we have a need in all of us as parents to
know that our kids are okay and I was really, really happy to do that for
Cherie and for Clark.'
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