EAGAN, MN (RNN) - A few weeks ago, a DNA test gave a 72-year-old woman a surprising result.
Denise Juneski matched none of her close kin, KARE reported.
A relative of Linda Jourdeans also discovered Juneski in her family tree but not Jourdeans.
Through research and additional DNA tests, the wo families discovered that the 72-year-old women, born on the same day at the same hospital, were switched at birth.
Both Juneski and Jourdeans were born on Dec. 19, 1945, less than an hour apart, at Bethesda Hospital in St. Paul.
They aren't sure how the switch happened, but the babies apparently left the hospital with the wrong families.
The women have met, and are getting to know relatives they didn't realize they had.
Jourdeans has met her biological mother, who's 99. Juneski's biological mother died at age 42 of cancer.
The women stood out in the families in which they were raised - one a red-haired girl in a family of blondes, the other a blonde in a family of red and brown hair.
The women said they are thankful to know the truth after all of these years.
“I consider it a gift,” Juneski said.
Two 72-year-old women have just learned they were switched at birth. For seven decades, Denice Juneski and Linda Jourdeans have lived each other's life: https://t.co/yJQ0aVIWEY #land10kstories pic.twitter.com/ZaqQjvYxHM
— Boyd Huppert (@BoydHuppert) June 11, 2018
Readily available DNA tests are helping solve mysteries, change lives and uncover secrets.
A DNA test and a public genealogy database is partly responsible for the arrest of a Golden State Killer suspect.
DNA tests also revealed that a fertility doctor in Canada used his own sperm in treatments, fathering 11 children without the consent of the families involved, CNN reported.
His biological children - now adults - discovered something was amiss when their DNA tests revealed they weren't related to the men they thought fathered them.
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