Advertise on NYTimes.comSwitched at Birth, Women Find New Identity
E.J. Harris/East Oregonian, via Associated Press
Kay Rene Qualls, left, and DeeAnn Shafer recently learned they had been switched shortly after their births in Oregon.

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LinkedinDiggFacebookMixxMySpaceYahoo! BuzzPermalinkBy WILLIAM YARDLEY
Published: May 13, 2009
PASCO, Wash. — They are calling themselves “twisters.” After all, the standard terms of family and relationships seem insufficient to describe the recently discovered connection between Kay Rene Qualls and DeeAnn Shafer.

Both women were born on May 3, 1953, the only births that day in tiny Pioneer Memorial Hospital in rural Heppner, Ore. Both grew up happily, got married, raised children and now have grandchildren.

Then, last summer, say friends and family members, an elderly woman who knew the families of both women long ago made a call to Mrs. Qualls’s brother. The woman, who has not been identified, had news she felt she had to share as her life neared its end and the younger women’s parents had already died.

“It’s shocking, totally shocking,” said Mrs. Shafer’s husband, Rick. “But both families have opened up their arms.”

The woman said that Kay Rene and DeeAnn were supposed to be vice versa. She said they had been switched at birth in the hospital, apparently accidentally, and taken home by the other’s mother. Floored and skeptical but also curious, Mrs. Qualls and Mrs. Shafer tracked each other down earlier this year and agreed to a DNA test. Then they went out to lunch.

Both shared stories of the rumors, long ago dismissed, that their mothers had brought home the wrong baby. That moment in the nursery in 1953 apparently had been the only time they had crossed paths.

When the DNA test came back, it confirmed what the elderly woman had said. With their identities upended, they cried and they laughed. They had a party, too.

“They had a birthday family reunion together, when they met all of each other’s siblings,” said Florene Robinson, Mrs. Qualls’s best friend and a colleague at the Bank of Eastern Oregon in Heppner.

The new extended family took pictures. There was Kay Rene standing beside DeeAnn’s sisters, her long-lost mirror images. There was DeeAnn alongside her biological family members, her blue eyes and blond hair suddenly making more sense.

Their story appeared in the East Oregonian newspaper this week and quickly shot across the Internet. Television producers tracked Mrs. Qualls to the ranch outside Heppner where she has long lived with her husband, Lyndale Qualls. They reached Mrs. Shafer here in Pasco, where she has just moved from Spokane, Wash., with her husband of 35 years, Rick, who helps run his brother’s used-car dealership.

“Good Morning America” is flying three generations of both families to New York for an appearance this week. Until then, both women said in brief telephone conversations, they are keeping more of their story to themselves. Already, they have tired of the news media’s inquiries, they said.

And then there are the questions they ask themselves.

“She has her highs and lows,” Mr. Shafer said of his wife. “One minute she’s happy, the next she’s sad because she never got to meet her real mom and dad, or her grandparents.”

“It eats at her,” Mr. Shafer said. “And I know it eats at Kay Rene, too. I mean, DeeAnn’s supposed to be Kay Rene

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/us/14switched.html?hpw