Alaska Premier Real Estate broker reunited with son

WASILLA — In some ways, Janice Lobaugh, 48, is a typical mom.

Flipping through pictures of her son on her computer she begins to narrate.

It was just a week ago when the two were together at his family’s home in South Carolina.

“This is where I touched his back and he turned around,” she says pointing to the back of Spencer Parrish Williams and his wife, Michelle.

“And this is where I fall into his arms and bawl my eyes out.”

‘I had no dreams. No goals. I was just a kid’

She was living in Juneau, the 17-year-old daughter of a single mother of three who worked nonstop to pay the bills and raise her family.

Janice was too young to understand why her mother was always gone, too young to know why she never seemed to have enough time for the children. Times were tough. Their relationship was rocky. They fought a lot.

But it’s a lot for any mother to absorb, finding out the same day that your two teenage daughters are pregnant.

After the child was born, Janice found work as a maid. And a family friend moved in to help with the baby and the rent.

One Friday, about five months after her son’s birth, Janice asked her mother if she could borrow the car to pick up her paycheck and cash it. Although her mother said no to using the car, she agreed to watch the baby while Janice took the bus to Juneau, an hour each way.

Janice called the house from the bus stop in town to ask about the child, but her mother said he wasn’t there.

“He got too fussy and I couldn’t take it, so I called the police,” her mom said.

He was taken to the St. Jude Center, about 3 miles away. But when Janice got there, they refused to return her baby. They said she had to meet with a caseworker on Monday.

The state caseworker asked lots of questions about her situation at home and family support.

The environment wasn’t ideal and the caseworker asked Janice if she had ever considered adoption. No, she said, but she knew she wanted him to be loved and to have a good life.

Think about it, the caseworker said. There were families out there who were willing to take care of the boy and provide him a loving home.

“I had no dreams. No goals. I was just a kid,” Lobaugh said.

She signed the adoption papers in 1983. “I thought of my son as I signed the papers, it was the most unselfish thing I have ever done in my life.”

Janice saw her son a few more times in the months afterward. Twice she went to visit him where he lived with his foster family. The last time she saw him he was a baby in Juneau, mischievously honking the horn on the family car. Janice went over and said hello.

The woman in the car, Tena Parrish Williams, told her the paperwork had gone through to adopt the boy. She said his name would be Spencer Parrish.

That was the last time she saw her son.

‘I kept going back’

For three decades she searched for Spencer with all the tools at her disposal. With the advent of Google and Ancestry.com, her power to search multiplied exponentially.

Over the years, she searched his name on Google dozens of times, but the search term “Spencer Parrish” turned up a seemingly insurmountable heap of results.

“That was kind of a dead end, but I kept going back,” Lobaugh said.

Everything changed Feb. 20 when she was on the phone with her sister discussing whether their Aunt Vi was still alive. So Lobaugh entered her aunt’s name into Google and in a few minutes, found her address in Seattle, Wash.

That jogged her mind to plug in that illusive set of search terms again. “Spencer Parrish,” she typed. Again, mind numbing, heartbreaking millions of hits turned up. But how to find her son among all them?

She started typing. Something slightly different this time, “Spencer Parrish, Juneau Alaska.”

It was about 10:30 p.m., Feb. 20 when, in an instant, three decades of searching finally paid off.

The first result Google listed showed her son’s name, Spencer Parrish Williams, and a note he’d posted looking for her on Ancestry.com nearly 12 years ago on Feb. 4, 2001, 10 days after his 18 birthday.

It reads, as posted:

“My name is spencer parrish williams. I was born in Juneau Alaska in 1983. I was given up for adoption when I was about five months old. I have been looking for my mother for the past two years. Her name is one of the following:

“Janet Randall

“Janice Randall

“Janis Randall

“I think that she was born on 1965. Her last known whereabouts were juneau alaska and that was in 1983. I dont know if she has left the state of ak. But if you or anyone that you know has worked with or even know a person by this name, please contact me by the way of e-mail. I would really like to know my mother.”

‘They’re clients of mine’

By 10:32 p.m., Lobaugh was still in shock but had regained enough composure to send a few words in reply.

“Spencer, my dear son...I am here! In Alaska...where are you?”

She left a second note at 10:50 p.m., that night.

“Spencer, I don’t know how to find you, I am looking all over the internet...have posted several times over the years looking for you...please GOD, let this email find my son!”

She included her email address, but both messages she sent in reply to his 2001 note bounced back.

While Lobaugh tried other avenues, it took her 19-year-old daughter Karlesa Lobaugh minutes to find a man on Facebook she was sure was her big brother. But her mom wasn’t convinced.

“Mom, look at him, he looks just like Grandma and his birth date is right,” Karlesa said.

Still unsure, Lobaugh sent a couple of private message to his Facebook page.

And in the morning she followed up with an early call to Ancestry.com to ask if they had more information about the person who posted the note. They were intrigued by her story, but had no more information to offer.

After more dead-ends, her search took another giant step forward when she noticed a familiar name in the search results, Tena Parrish Williams — her son’s foster mom from 30 years ago.

Searching for the number and without a phone book handy, Karlesa called her dad at work. He didn’t need a phone book to give her the Williams’ contact information, though.

“Oh, Tena and Monty,” he said. “They’re clients of mine.”

Lobaugh tried the number once, but hung up when the recorder answered.

Driving with her husband and 7-year-old daughter Kareena McGurgan back from an Anchorage doctor’s appointment, Lobaugh tried again. This time she left a message and Tena called back about 90 minutes later.

She asked Janice how she was doing, she said fine, “I am calling about Spencer, but am not sure if I have the right house.”

“Janice, you have the right house,” Tena said. “Are you his biological mother?”

‘Spencer, it’s her’

Tena told Janice that Spencer was on his way back to Afghanistan and had just landed in the Atlanta airport. When Tena spoke with him, he asked her to verify that it was his biological mother prior to him making contact directly, then Tena’s cellphone started to ring, it was Spencer.

She placed her cellphone on speakerphone so Janice could hear their conversation.

“Spencer, it’s her,” Tena said.

Spencer is a thick-chested man in his prime, his close-cut hair a telltale sign of years in military service. After an honorable discharge for medical reasons, Spencer was in the airport headed back to Afghanistan to work as a military contractor when his mom called back that day.

He had to retrieve his luggage while waiting for the departure, he said, and he would call as soon as he could.

Spencer said Thursday that he’d almost forgotten about the note he posted on Valentine’s Day 2001.

“I didn’t think it was going nowhere,” he said by phone from Pickens, S.C., where he lives with his wife, Michelle, and their three children.

That note wasn’t his only attempt to find his birth mom. He said he looked for her on and off for his whole life.

“The main reason was I wanted to know who I was and where I came from,” Spencer said. “I wanted to know why.”

It swept his legs from under him when his mom delivered the news.

“When she called, it shook me up,” he said. “It dropped me to my knees.”

After nearly 30 years apart, mother and child talked and cried with each other until it was time for his flight to Afghanistan to leave. They exchanged phone numbers, friended each other on Facebook, vowed to keep and touch — and one day to meet again.

“I beat the odds,” she said. “I never gave up. I never quit looking.”

‘The hardest thing I ever did’

After they connected, Lobaugh got back in touch with Ancestry.com to share her family’s story and thank them for their help.

“This is another service they can provide that can help reunite families,” she said.

Ancestry.com called back May 2 to say they’d like to fly Lobaugh to South Carolina a week later to reunite her with her son.

The two met at 10:30 a.m., May 10 in South Carolina.

The first picture shows her with her eyes closed and her hands cupped around her nose and mouth. Cameras press in on three sides to capture the moment.

“When I was walking up to him it was so powerful, it stopped me in my tracks,” Lobaugh said Thursday. “When I touched him on his back, I can’t describe it.”

Millions of folks around the world heard their story after news outlets — from ABC, NBC, CBS to the Associated Press and Yahoo! Shine — shared the story this week of their reunion three decades in the making.

“It’s a blessing to finally find my son three decades later,” she said Thursday from her office, Alaska Premier Real Estate, where she is the owner and broker. “Letting him go was the hardest thing I ever did.”

Contact Heather A. Resz at 352-2268 or heather.resz@frontiersman.com.