Alabama woman and long-lost father united by DNAngels
After 39 years, Todd Newberry and his daughter, Tiffney Triesler, were united, thanks to genetic genealogy research performed by the nonprofit DNAngels. (Tiffney Triesler)
Driving from Birmingham through Mississippi, Louisiana and across the Texas plains gave Tiffney Triesler plenty of time to reflect – to ponder precious moments lost. During the 12-hour drive, her husband, Brian, occasionally reached over to give her hand a reassuring squeeze.
Like thousands of people, their family was on a trek to see grandparents for the holidays. The difference was, Tiffney Triesler was meeting her long-lost father – the man who, for 39 years, existed only in her dreams.
On Dec. 29, 2022, Triesler stepped through her father’s front door in Round Rock, Texas, headlong into a warm and loving embrace. It was the moment she had yearned for her entire life.
The long journey home
It may have been fate or, as an acquaintance of Triesler opined, the universe opening the door to find her father.
A busy wife and mom to Elijah and Isabella, Triesler is the branch experience director at a Birmingham credit union. During a spare moment in November 2022, she flipped through her phone and saw a TikTok about DNAngels, a nonprofit that helps reunite people with their lost family members. Intrigued, Triesler tucked the name into memory.
Triesler’s mother, Cynthia Peoples, had become pregnant at 14 – too young to raise a child by herself. The situation forced Peoples, as a freshman at Minor High School in Adamsville, to drop out. That left Peoples’ mother to take charge. Peoples did not name the father of her cherubic, blue-eyed baby girl.
“My grandmother, Betty Joyce Saxon, really did the majority of my parenting,” said Triesler, who felt the absence of a father while growing up. Despite the difficulties, Triesler was a successful student and graduated from Jefferson State Community College, where she earned an associate degree in finance.
When Triesler had children, the inability to record her full family medical history was frustrating. “I didn’t even know what to say at the doctor’s office when my pediatrician asked about my kids,” Triesler said. “When they said, ‘Tell me about their family history,’ I didn’t know.”
In her mid-30s, Triesler tried to find her father, but the search came up empty. At one point, her mother refused to provide leads. With little to go on, Triesler signed up for Ancestry DNA.
“It showed me some people that were possible DNA matches from my father’s side, and I didn’t have a clue about who any of these people were,” she said. That left an incomplete family tree with few names. Her mother refused to get involved.
“My mom clammed up,” Triesler said. “I stopped trying to even ask her anything.” Recalling the DNAngels message, she wrote to the organization for help.
“At first, DNAngels said I didn’t have enough of a match with anyone from my father’s side for them to be willing to take on my case,” Triesler said. “I needed more of a match, and I didn’t have it.” Opportunities to reach into the past seemed to evaporate as her mother grew ill from liver cancer. Peoples was 54 when she died on Nov. 10, 2022.
An unusual turn of events occurred just five days after her mother died.
“Someone from DNAngels contacted me and asked if I’d be interested in their services,” Triesler said. “What was weirder was the lady who reached out to me had the same name as my mother: Cynthia.”
Lifelong mystery solved by DNAngels
Triesler’s situation is among 3,900 cases solved by DNAngels, an organization that Laura Olmsted said is based on the belief that everyone deserves to know and understand who they are and where they come from. 
Olmsted, executive director of DNAngels, decided to take Triesler’s case after reading her letter. A genetic genealogist, Olmsted has solved more than 2,000 cases, starting by unearthing her own family mystery.
Olmsted said that when people take an at-home DNA test, they get matched with thousands of cousins. Using Triesler’s Ancestry DNA information, she examined common ancestors in Triesler’s family tree, along with the common factor in all her cousins’ trees, until she found Triesler’s grandfather and father.
“It’s a form of genetic genealogy, where we identify the common ancestors in a tree,” Olmsted said. “We use DNA matching, and we require ancestry, at a minimum. You’re using your shared matches to find the common factor in those trees, and those common factors come together to form a family. So I was able to find Tiffney’s grandfather and her grandmother, and they had so many children, and only one of them could be her father. I knew within about two weeks that I had found the identity of Tiffney’s father.”
Olmsted calls DNAngels her “labor of love.” In 2019 she co-founded the nonprofit with a team of “search angels,” or genetic genealogists. Today, DNAngels depends on the work of 15 search angels and 45 people who perform intake screening and research.
The group uses social media, such as Facebook and TikTok, to spread the message about the free services. Clients also use TikTok to share how DNAngels helped them find a lost loved one, which is how Triesler heard about the nonprofit.
“We want people to know that they don’t have to be financially privileged and don’t have to hire a genetic genealogist, some of which charge $3,500 for the first 20 hours of research to identify your birth parent,” said Olmsted, a member of the International Society of Genetic Genealogy. “It should not be a privilege to know who your parent is.”
Two days before Thanksgiving, Olmsted texted Triesler to let her know she’d found her father, Todd Newberry. She provided his contact information.
Uncertainty and loss wash away
To Triesler, seeing her father’s name was akin to winning the lottery. The day before Thanksgiving, she messaged Newberry on Linkedin. Because both work in finance – he is the CFO of an equipment loan company in Austin, Texas – Triesler thought, “That won’t be alarming.”
After he added her to Linkedin, Triesler wrote that she needed to discuss an urgent family matter. Newberry was curious, but figured, “I’m from Birmingham, all my family is from Birmingham, and I was the first one to move off for generations … maybe somebody had passed away, a cousin’s brother or something.”
He called immediately – his sons and their families would arrive for Thanksgiving in about an hour.
Triesler’s story tumbled out. “I was just blustering. I couldn’t catch my breath … I said, “My mother was Cynthia Peoples, I hope that you remember her.” Then, she pressed to the heart of the matter: “I don’t know how to say it, it’s just so hard. But I believe that you’re my biological father.”
The news sobered Newberry, who said, “Well, it’s possible. I did know a Cindy Peoples. I’m not going to lie to you, it’s possible.”
Newberry and Peoples were 14- and 16-year-olds when they met 40 years ago. They both were with high school friends watching a movie at a theater in Birmingham when they saw each other.
“We got to talking, which led to exchanging numbers and going out,” said Newberry, who explained they went on two dates but were not around each other every day. “We did some things we shouldn’t have done, but that doesn’t mean Tiffney is a mistake. It just means we were teenagers behaving like teenagers.”
Peoples never told Newberry about her pregnancy. The longer he talked with Triesler, he thought, ‘This is probably for real.’”
Triesler told Newberry, emphatically, “I know that you didn’t know. My family doesn’t even know your name. I don’t fault you, and I’m not trying to get anything out of you. But if my father would like to know me, I would like to know my father.”
With his family beginning to stream in, Newberry had to wait until the Sunday after Thanksgiving before he could privately discuss the news with his wife of 35 years, Amy.
“It took her a few days to process the information, but then Amy lovingly accepted Tiffney as our new daughter,” he said.
Triesler and Newberry took a paternity test, whose result was 99.97% positive. Afterward, both families talked on a Zoom call. The Newberrys invited Tiffney, Brian and their children to visit.
“It’s really been a good thing,” said Newberry, who grew up in a close-knit family. “You sit around and make comments throughout your life like, ‘I don’t know how anybody could abandon a child or wouldn’t love their child or want to have something to do with their child.’ Then, suddenly, you’re faced with something like that. It never, ever was a temptation for me to say, ‘You go your way,’ or to try to get away.
“For me, it was, ‘You’re my child, and I do want to know you,’” he said. “And she has wanted to know me, so it has really gone well.”
His deepest wish is that he had known sooner that he has a daughter.
“Amy and I would have loved to have Tiffney with us,” Newberry said. “The first thing that went through my mind is, ‘Yes, I didn’t know.’ But I hate, especially for a young girl, I wasn’t there on prom night, I wasn’t there when the first boy hurt her feelings. I wasn’t there to give her away at her wedding. I wasn’t there to do the things that dads do. And I missed out on that, and she missed out on that.”
A father and daughter relationship is born
Before meeting, there was nervousness on both sides. Triesler was introduced to the Newberry side of her family: Amy, who she calls her “Bonus Mom,” her grandmother, two half-brothers and sisters-in-law, along with nieces and nephews. Her eldest half-brother was not there because he had COVID-19.
Amy Newberry included the Trieslers in all their family traditions before they arrived. She made a display with clip-on photos of each Newberry grandchild, which includes Isabella and Elijah. The Newberrys’ family tree on the living room wall holds pictures of their newfound daughter and son-in-law. Refrigerator magnets show caricatures of each family. In the backyard, stepping stones on the lawn are marked with the Trieslers’ names.
To Newberry’s relief, his family has been fully supportive. Even before Triesler visited, Newberry’s middle son, Brandon, called to welcome her to the family.
“God was really in this, because when Tiffney told me, it was just a warm, loving feeling that came over me,” Newberry said. “It was never a feeling to want to reject her or not to want to find out more about her, so the Lord really knows the right timing and just brought it all together.”
For a father and daughter who spent years apart, their personalities are stunningly alike.
“It’s funny because we see a lot of the same qualities in each other,” Newberry said. “Tiffney’s very analytical, and she’s Type A – I’m Type A. Someone I work with asked me about her, and I said, ‘She’s assertive and outgoing, and she does financial things and she’s analytical.’ And he said, ‘Well, you didn’t need a DNA test, then.’”
Triesler agreed. “We have similar interests, a similar sense of humor. It’s odd, we just tend to handle situations similarly. Brian keeps saying, ‘That apple didn’t fall too far from the tree.’”
Since their families connected, Triesler’s life has come full circle. “My husband has held me more times than I could count, encouraged me and been just fantastic. Before, I didn’t know where I belonged.”
The meaning of family
Triesler and Newberry, and their respective families, are still learning about each other.
Triesler’s new family gave her a memorable gift before she returned home. (Alabama News Center)
“There will be things about us that are unique and drive her crazy, and I’m sure that I’ll find things about her, but that’s part of being family,” Newberry said. “Tiffney appreciates the fact we’re here on the good days and the bad days. We will be here. Everybody wants their parents, I think, no matter how old they are … no matter what their parents were, to accept them, to love them and to be there. I’m trying to be that. I think that she needs that, and she wants that.”
Her new family gave Triesler a memorable gift before she returned to Alabama.
In a Bible inscribed to her, Todd and Amy Newberry wrote, “We had always hoped for a daughter, but we never had one. We think it’s because God knew, all along, that you were going to find us.”
