Anytime you're waiting for someone at the airport, you're nervous, excited, and probably checking your phone. For Karen Hill, there were extra nerves as she waited to meet her long-lost sister.
"I'm excited to meet her. I just can't wait to meet her!" Hill said.
Hill's older sister found out a few months ago that a woman named Deb Myers was looking for them. Deb was the fourth daughter born to her mom, but none of the kids even knew their mom was even pregnant back then. Hill's mom had been diagnosed with MS, and she thinks that's why Deb was given up for adoption 50 years ago.
"At first I was like, really surprised, but yet I was kind of angry because there were certain people in my family that knew about this and never told me. It was this big secret. And i was like, 'This is horrible!' All these years, and I had a sister,'" Hill said.
But all that emotion was wiped away Tuesday as Deb walked into the Tampa International Airport terminal.
"I love you so much! I'm so happy!" said Deb Myers as she embraced Karen Hill.
Myers found one of her siblings on Facebook after her closed adoption files became open in the state of Ohio last year. Then, she got connected to her other two sisters, including Karen in Florida, and the two decided to meet.
"Did you ever think when you started this search you would actually find her?" ABC Action News asked.
"No I didn't. And I did. And now I have a sister. I'm so happy. I'm just so happy!" Myers said.
The two still have a lot of questions, and a lifetime of catching up to do. But now that they've found each other, they're already making plans for the future.
"Now I have a winter home and she can have a summer home," Hill said.
"Yeah! She can come anytime she wants!" Myers said.
The girls' biological mother died several years ago. Karen Hill's parents were divorced when she was just a toddler, and she went into foster care after her mother's death. Her father died in 2011. It's all given Karen and Deb even more reasons to be thankful they found each other.
