a lawyer from 42 years who was stolen at birth during the government of the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet and raised in the United States, he has traveled thousands of kilometers to South America to meeting her biological mother for the first time.
“She didn’t know about me because they took me at birth and told her I was dead,” Jimmy Lippert Thyden said in a TikTok video while on the plane. “When she asked about my body, they told her it had been thrown away.” “So we never hugged, we never hugged.”
Walking down a street in Valdiviahis mother’s hometown, about 740 kilometers south of the Chilean capitalWith a bouquet of flowers in hand, Lippert Thyden tearfully hugged María Angélica González, her biological mother. In addition, he traveled to Chile with his wife and two daughterswho they met their grandmother for the first time.
Lippert Thyden was reconnected with his family thanks to a DNA trace conducted through MyHeritage.com and Nos Buscamos, a Chilean non-governmental organization that helps reconnect people separated during the 17-year dictatorship. Thousands of people disappeared and tens of thousands were tortured during the Pinochet government, which ended in 1990.
The founder of Nos Buscamos, Constance of the River, created the organization after being unable to find information about his own biological family. The NGO says it has managed to help about 400 people to reconnect with their families.