Vet's Life-Long Search For His Missing Kids Takes A Turn After He Receives One Strange 'Tip'

Allen's epic tale began back in 1966 when he departed New Hampshire for South Korea. He was just 19 years old at the time, and he was sent as a fresh-faced G.I. to Korea’s demilitarized zone. Even though he was technically in a no-conflict area, it was clear that the relations between North and South Korea were tense.

It was Allen's job to work on military helicopters, and his duties were mainly confined to the daytime. When he wasn't working, the bright lights of Seoul drew Thomas to the city, as they did many young soldiers in South Korea. And it was in Seoul that Allen met someone who changed his life forever.

In fact, Allen encountered a woman by the name of Pae Seong-Kuem at the Non-Commissioned Officer’s Club. Sparks immediately flew, too, despite Kuem being five years his senior, and they struck up a relationship. As mentioned, Kuem, whom Allen affectionately called “Connie,” had a son from a previous relationship, but it wasn’t long before she was pregnant again — with Allen's baby.

Happily, while the Summer of Love was sweeping across America, Allen and Connie were staging their own love-in in Korea. And it was only sweetened by the arrival of James and Sandra in September 1967. So when Allen's tour came to an end in 1969, the stage seemed set for the newlyweds and their children to begin their life together in the U.S.

But, as it turned out, things weren’t that simple. Because James and Sandra were fathered by an American citizen, they were permitted to emigrate to the U.S. The same rule didn't apply to Connie and her other son, however. They were flat-out denied access to the U.S., so Connie refused to allow Allen to take any of the kids with him to America without her.

Alone in America, Allen wrote to Connie for news of the kids. However, the massive distance between them began to affect their relationship. Allen was so desperate for closer contact with his family that he actually volunteered to fight in Vietnam, and in 1971 he managed to visit South Korea on a month’s leave of absence.

Things weren’t the same, though. In fact, that 1971 visit was the last time Allen ever saw the family together. And after he left South Korea, his relationship with Connie continued to deteriorate. Allen's last correspondence with Connie was a letter sent in 1974 in which Connie asked Allen to take James and Sandra to America with him.

But for Allen, this was an impossibility. He was totally bankrupt, and things only got worse from there. He noticed that the letters he sent to Korea were being returned without any indication as to where Connie had moved. With no obvious way to maintain the relationship with his twins, Allen set up a new life with a woman from his hometown.

Her name was Polly Paquin, and, like Connie, she already had children from a previous relationship. In an attempt to move on, Allen divorced Connie in her absence and married Paquin. He also adopted her children, Scott and Charlene. Allen eventually had a son by Paquin, too, though the twins were never far from the veteran’s mind.

Finally, Allen caught a break in the early 1980s. While searching for his twins, he discovered that Connie had given them up for adoption. With the help of the U.S. State Department, among others, Allen also learned that the twins were being cared for in America. However, because of privacy laws, he wasn't given any more information.

All Allen knew was that the twins had been taken to America in 1976, meaning they had been either eight or nine when they were adopted. This no doubt came as a huge blow to Allen, whose attempts at finding his children kept hitting dead ends. “I’m mad. I was highly upset,” Allen explained to ABC News.

Fortunately, that wasn’t the end of the story, as the advent of social media helped Allen broadcast his search to the world. In April 2015 he asked his Facebook community to help him find Sandra and James. His Facebook post was accompanied by images of the twins along with their birth certificates and adoption documentation.

“I have been searching for decades, unsuccessfully, but have decided that perhaps Facebook could help me to find them,” Allen wrote. Though his tone was reserved, his longing and emotion shone through in the message. Luckily, the post provided the breakthrough that Allen so desperately desired.

Allen's story was picked up by ABC News, and investigative genealogist Pam Slaton was put on the case. With the help of ABC News’ Seoul Bureau Chief Joohee Cho, Slaton started to unpack the mystery of the Thomas twins. As she quickly realized, though, finding info about the twins wasn't easy.

This was because Sandra and James' birth dates, coupled with the fact that they were adopted together, were just not enough information to go off of. “That’s when the panic started setting in,” Slaton told ABC News’ 20/20. But then, out of the blue, help finally came from South Korea.

Allen was contacted on Facebook by one Keonsu Lee, a Seoul-based police detective with a specialism in finding missing children. Lee was consequently put in contact with Cho, and with his help she was able to track down the son Allen adopted when he married Connie all those years ago.

His name was Jae-Im, and despite initial reservations, he agreed to release James and Sandra’s adoption records from the Korean adoption agency. Jae-Im and his wife were also able to shed a little light on Connie’s behavior after her marriage to Allen had started to break down.

Apparently, Connie believed that Allen had met another woman while he was in Vietnam. And her decision to put the twins up for adoption might actually have been well-intentioned, since, according to Jae-Im’s wife, “it meant huge success at the time to be going to America, equivalent to paradise.” Meanwhile, Slaton finally had access to the twins’ adoption records and was able to track the pair down in the U.S.

Slaton eventually discovered that both twins had been adopted by an academic in Pennsylvania. They went by different names, too. James was known as Timothy James Parker and worked as a trucker in Missouri, and Sandra went by Susan Williams and was living in Wisconsin with her husband and two kids.

And so, after arranging initial phone calls between Allen and the twins, Slaton and 20/20 brought the family members back together for an emotional reunion. After almost 50 years of not knowing who their biological father was, Parker and Williams were overwhelmed with emotion.

Parker said, “I just can’t believe you’re my actual father. I’m standing right here looking at you.” For Allen, meanwhile, a decades-old wound was finally healed. “I’ve been looking for a long time,” he said. It's heartbreaking to think about how Allen and his twins were so close, yet so far apart for so long...

Like Allen, many families are forced to separate from their kids for decades. In one infamous case, however, the reason behind a mother and daughter's separation was much darker than most. Their reunion was a lifetime in the making, and it all started in a most unlikely place: Burger King.

On September 15th, 1986, the fryers sizzled, the drive-thru speaker barked, and the kids got their happy meals at the Allentown, Pennsylvania Burger King. Workers and satisfied customers thought it a typical afternoon — until they heard shrieks in the bathroom.

Only a baby, they knew, could produce those piercing wails. The Burger King crowd politely minded their business, thinking, "ugh, that parent's got their hands full with a fussy child." But as the clock ticked, the screams never quelled.

The manager on duty went to investigate. From the moment he opened the door, the cries, no longer muffled, filled the restaurant. He knew something was terribly wrong.

Wrapped in a sweater, the red-faced baby was lying on the floor beneath the sink. With no sign of a parent or responsible guardian, the manager realized the child was abandoned. Judging by her looks, she was just a few hours old.

With the newborn's health at risk, Burger King's staff promptly called an ambulance. EMTs arrived and confirmed the manager's suspicions: the baby girl was maybe 3 hours old and, thankfully, healthy. This was only a small comfort to onlookers, who all felt tremendous sorrow for the baby.

Allentown Police arrived on scene to attempt tracking down the person responsible for abandoning the baby. Realistically, there wasn't much to go on. One officer commented, "Right now, we're the only thing this kid's got in terms of a family."

Police turned to the public, pleading for someone to turn themselves in. An EMT cuddling the rosy-cheeked infant voiced what a lot of responders were thinking, "I'm sure whoever gave her up is having a very hard time right now."

The "Burger King Baby" was the hot one-liner on all the local news stations. The police department hoped the continuous press coverage would trigger a guilty conscious. Still, no one came forward.

After exhausting all investigative resources — fingerprinting, interviews — and the baby remained parentless. They moved to put the little girl up for adoption. Several months after her chaotic entry to the world, the baby went to her first home.

Brenda and Carl Hollis learned of the abandoned baby in the bathroom from news reports. The couple was eager for a child of their own, so they adopted the "Burger King Baby" and finally gave her an actual name — Katheryn.

So it was 12 years of a normal suburban childhood — dance class, sleepovers, homework at the kitchen table — until the Hollises decided it was time to tell Katheryn the truth. She'd known she was adopted but not the painful details of her abandonment.

When words failed them, Brenda and Carl showed Katheryn an album of press clippings. Over the years, Katheryn wore the pages from use. "I would never want to replace my adopted family," she said, "but being adopted, a part of you is missing and unless you've been adopted, you really just don't understand that."

But Katheryn carried on with life. After she graduated high school, she entered the medical field as an EMT ambulance driver, possibly a call to duty after the care she'd received in her most helpless time of need.

At 27, the now-married adult with her own child understood the challenge of bringing life into the world. Holding and mothering her own baby took the ever-present curiosity about her birth parents from a small flame into an all-consuming blaze.

Where does a regular person turn when they want to reach the masses? Facebook, of course. Katheryn hoped her snappy nickname would make people click the share button. So, she grabbed her markers, jotted down her unique story, and trusted the internet to come through.

Her photo, linked to a page titled Katheryn "Burger King Baby Deprill" quickly caught traction online. In the span of 2 weeks, 30,000 people shared her post. The power of social media circulation paid off, and Katheryn got the message she'd waited 27 years for.

Prepared for a hard-to-swallow serving of neglect, Katheryn was stunned by the story in her inbox. A woman named Cathy Pochek reached out, and she admitted she was her biological mother that left her in the public bathroom.

The message detailed how guilt ridden Cathy was for the ultimate act of abdication, but it was done out of the sheer desperation of a traumatized child. Cathy was 16 at the time, and she'd gotten pregnant as the result of a rape.

Her assault took place on a family vacation abroad. Gutted and wracked with shame, Cathy never confided in anyone, let alone her family, about the attack. When she returned to the States and discovered her pregnancy, she couldn't handle the reality.

In Cathy's teenage eyes, leaving her baby in a public space, where she surely would be found, was the only way out of her predicament. After giving birth to her daughter alone in her bedroom, she kissed her forehead and left her in the Burger King.

Katheryn sympathized. She thought of her own son, and how easy it is to make a mistake on the heels of trauma. Cathy had acted out of fear, but now they had a chance to move forward.

Following an initial meeting, Katheryn, Cathy, and Brenda were invited to share their story on NBC's TODAY. For all three women, it was a major step towards healing and forging a new relationship, but they also discovered some funny family coincidences.

For starters, they share the same name. Cathy's full name is Catherine Ann, and Brenda unknowingly named her daughter Katheryn Ann. Both women drive the exact same car, down to the color. Cathy worked as an EMT, just like Katheryn.

Besides their many mother-daughter likenesses, Cathy and Katheryn shared another strange connection. Cathy babysat a little boy who grew up to be Katheryn's husband. In small but meaningful ways, the universe always seemed to brushed them past one another until the day they finally met.