VALRICO, Fla. – Six months ago fate found 78-year-old Gary Barnes when a woman named Olivia Robles found him.
“Oh, it has to be [fate],” Barnes said with a smile, looking toward the sky above him. “Thank you, Lord.”
Living at opposite ends of the country and a lifetime apart, the two first met in November when Barnes, 50, traveled to California to fulfill a dream she’d been holding onto since she was a little girl.
“I always knew I had a dad out there somewhere,” Barnes said.
On Sunday, the two will spend their first Father’s Day together.
It started with a DNA test the mother of three from Valrico submitted to Ancestry.com several years ago with the original intent to learn her true ethnicity. Robles was born in the Philippines but didn't know much about her background beyond that.
An unexpected match with a distant cousin helped Robles connect the dots to a father she never knew and him to a family he never knew existed.
Barnes, a decorated Vietnam veteran, met Robles’ mother in the Philippines during his service. But the two lost touch.
“I never even knew she was pregnant,” he recalled. “Without having children, I missed those events where families got together and they loved each other and enjoyed being together, I never had that.
“Now I do.”
Robles credits their meeting to something greater.
“It was a divine intervention that brought us together,” she said.
The two have wasted no time making up for lost time.
Barnes not only gained a daughter, but three grandsons—all who happen to have military backgrounds—and even one great-grandson.
Barnes and Robles say they talk every day—sometimes multiple times.
“Olivia is the first thing I think of every morning,” Barnes said. “I have to say goodnight to her on the phone and I want to hear her voice ‘good morning, DAD’ every morning.”
The family spent the holidays together and Barnes accompanied Robles to New York, where her youngest son is finishing up his first year at West Point.
“I got to pin his first badge on him and it’s too difficult to even describe the emotions I felt.” Barnes said. “What an honor, and after eight years of military service myself and being a Vietnam veteran, I just walked the halls of West Point in amazement.”
Robles was even able to reunite Barnes with her mother. The two hadn’t seen each other since before she was born.
“We actually got to do a selfie together on the couch, and that’s the first time ever that I have a picture of my parents together sitting next to me,” Robles said. “When you don’t have that and you finally get that moment, it’s just like, it’s priceless.”
But their journey together has only just begun.
With her boys now all grown, Robles is taking a job out west. Coincidentally, her new gig near Los Angeles will put her within a few hours-drive of her dad in Grass Valley, California.
“My heart is so happy,” Robles said. “We mesh so well and my boys love him.”
Barnes said from all of this he’s learned something he’ll never forget.
“More important than anything in life there is family," he said.
Robles said she’s been overwhelmed by the response she’s gotten from people around the world who have seen their story, with some even telling her they were inspired to find their own long-lost relatives.
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