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Mother's search for son ends on an emotional note
Investigator helps bring pair together after nearly 40 years
By Carroll Lachnit
The Orange County Reporter
SANTA ANA - The mother had all but given up searching for the son she lost
nearly 40 years ago. The son never knew of her quest. But with some detective
work, the two finally met in a tiny front yard Thursday, amid a thicket of
cameras and microphones.
Virgie Byrns, 70, sobbed in her son's arms. James Cottam, 39, kissed and
hugged her.
"It's OK. I'm here. It's been a long time," he said.
Bryns gazed up at the burly, bearded man.
"I grew up," he said."
"You sure did. You made a find man, didn't you," she replied.
Byrns said her ex-husband put their infant son up for adoption while she was
hospitalized with a broken back in early 1952.
Children's Home Society of California has told Byrns that her son, Wayne, was
placed through its adoption agency in 1954, and his first name was changed to
Jimmy.
In a letter to Byrns, the society said child-welfare authorities in San Diego
County removed Wayne, his brother, and two sisters from the custody of Byrns and
her husband because of neglect. Byrns denies she ever neglected her children.
She since has found the other three children.
But her efforts to find Wayne went nowhere. She sought help from Lori
Corangelo, a Palm Desert resident who runs an adoption reform organization.
Corangelo, in turn, nudged a San Juan Capistrano private investigator to work on
the case for free, citing Byrns' age and ill health.
The investigator, Pat Rutherford, said he had lunch with a source in San
Diego, passed some dollars across the table and got the names of the adoptive
parents.
"Then it was a matter of tracking them down," he said.
Cottam, a plumber who lives in Garner Valley in Riverside County, said his
adoptive father called him late Wednesday with the news that his birth mother
was looking for him. Cottam said his adoptive mother died two years ago.
He said he knew he was adopted, but never tried to find his birth parents.
"I had a real good child life," he said. "This is like the icing on the
cake."
Cottam said that because he was born in 1951 in San Diego, he assumed he was
a "war baby," perhaps fathered by a Korea-bound sailor.
Cottam said he waited until Thursday morning to call Byrns. Then he hopped in
the car with his wife, Lucy, and their son, Michael, and headed for Santa Ana to
meet the mother he didn't know he had.
Cottam was asked if he was going to change his first name back to Wayne.
"After 39 years of Jim, it kinda sticks with you," he said.
Byrns gazed alternately at the TV cameras and the son, no longer the baby in
a black and white snapshot she has cherished for years.
"It ain't a dream," she said. "God wouldn't do me that way, would he?"
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