HoneyBadger
YourWorstNightmare.
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Two cops on same force discover they are dad and son
Virginia officer follows clues to his father: ‘God works in mysterious ways’
By Michael Inbar
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 10:11 a.m. ET, Thurs., Feb. 12, 2009
Chris Walker would have searched the world over to find his biological dad. But it turns out his father was sitting right across from him.
An astounding father-son reunion, chronicled in a report by Ann Curry on TODAY Thursday, came together as the result of an unexpected confession from a mother and a bit of detective work from an inquisitive cop in Petersburg, Va.
The strange tale began to unfold when Walker, 37, a sergeant with the Petersburg Police Department, received shocking news from his mother that the man listed on his birth certificate was not his real father. She told him his biological father was a man named Clayton Hamilton, and that Walker was the result of a brief love affair she had had with Hamilton when they were teenagers in Richmond, Va.
Following the clues
Walker searched the name on the Internet, but didn’t find any prospective matches. Then he thought of 53-year-old Petersburg police detective Clay Hamilton, a retired Richmond officer who had recently joined the suburban police force in Petersburg, 20 miles away.
Although the two men are spitting images of each other, Walker thought he had hit a dead end when chatting with Hamilton, who informed Walker that his name was short for Claiborne, not Clayton.
Still, Hamilton’s age matched with what Walker’s mother had told him, and Hamilton told Walker he once dated a woman who went by the name of Billie Joe Walker.
Walker called his mother, but she was insistent that her son hadn’t found his real father, because the names didn’t match. Then Walker asked his mother if she knew a woman named Billie Joe.
“There was a pause on the phone, and she said, ‘That’s your dad,’ ” Walker told the Richmond Times-Dispatch. It turned out his mother’s teen nickname was Billie Joe, based on a hit song of the time, “Ode to Billie Joe.”
One DNA test later, Walker had found his father.
Catching up on 37 years
Hamilton filled his newfound son in on the details of his birth. He had briefly dated Walker’s mother, who was separated from her husband at the time. She became pregnant with a baby Hamilton suspected was his, but then she reconciled with her husband and moved 20 miles away. Attempts to locate her were unsuccessful.
The co-workers who found themselves father and son are now taking a crash course in each other’s lives, 37 years in the making. They are bonding with their respective families: Hamilton has a wife, a 12-year-old son, a 35-year-old daughter and a granddaughter, while Walker and his wife have a 5-year-old son.
“I feel like we’ve got a lot of time that we’ve missed,” Walker told the Times-Dispatch. “Of course you can’t ever make up for lost time. We’re going to do what we can to make it up.
“There’s no hard feeling from me, because I know he did everything he could to locate me. He’s my dad, and I love him. God works in mysterious ways.”
And Walker can now laugh when he looks at his fellow cop and father. “What do I see? Myself in 15 years!”
Link to Story
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Glad it had a happy ending!!
