Portland Trail Blazers radio play-by-play broadcaster Brian Wheeler tells the story of how he tracked down his birth parents on Blazers.com. --------------------------------- For those who don’t know, I was adopted at birth by a wonderful set of parents that passed away a long time ago… my father when I was a freshman in high school and my mother when I was a sophomore in college. All I ever knew about my birth mother was that she was a teenage girl whose own mother wouldn’t let her keep me because she felt I wouldn’t be properly taken care of. My adopted parents couldn’t have kids naturally as the mother I always knew wasn’t able to bear children. So they were looking to adopt and I became their one and only child. Illinois, where I was born, only became an open adoption state last Fall so I sent away for my original birth certificate in May. The adoption records office was pretty backed up with requests so I didn’t actually receive my birth certificate until about two months ago. And then when I viewed my authentic birth certificate for the first time, I thought I was only going to have the chance to get to know my birth mother. Her name was on the birth certificate, but that of my birth father was legally withheld. I enlisted the help of a private investigator in Long Beach, CA, and she moved very quickly and was able to identify eight possibilities for my birth mother within the first week or so of taking my case. A week later, she told me she was 100 percent sure who my birth mother was and 95 percent certain she was still alive. And then finally this past Monday, the investigator provided me with her full report which had the name of my birth mother as well as that of her husband, their address in Rockford, Illinois and information about two daughters they had within three years of my being born. --------------------------------- -- Ben Golliver | benjamin.golliver@gmail.com | Twitter