Local man finds long lost family abroad

ALBANY COUNTY, N.Y. (NEWS10) – David Fruchter and his late wife Susan always wanted a family. David sits at lunch with his adult son, looking like any other American family, but their journey is complicated by bittersweet emotions.

A HAPPY FAMILY

“There was a fertility issue. And that’s why we wanted to adopt,” David said. They met with several adoption support groups in the U.S. until his wife was steered in a different direction.

“We had been in touch with different adoption support groups and heard about different people’s experiences with adopting from abroad. And someone suggested Chile to her and there were a number of other people who had adopted from Chile, or had recently, and we decided to pursue that,” David said.

They traveled to South America to bring their adopted son to Colonie. Ben Fruchter was born in 1988 in Chillán, Chile. His adoption was finalized in 1989. By all accounts, Ben had a typical suburban upbringing.

“We never hid from Ben from a young age that he was adopted and that he was adopted from Chile,” David said.

He graduated from Colonie Central High School, but questions soon arose about his identity and where he came from. Ben always assumed that his biological family had given him up because they could not afford to give him the life they felt he deserved. He was always curious about his roots.

“It was quite difficult to come up with answers for projects about your family history, when everyone else seems to have an answer right away,” Ben said.

As he grew older, his curiosity grew and his desire to discover his roots became stronger. So he started looking for answers. He tried to find his biological family on social media and even tried genealogical websites, but to no avail.

“I just put it in the back of my mind and didn’t think about it anymore. I just went on with my day,” Ben said.

It was out of sight, out of mind. But that changed after his adoptive mother Susan passed away and David remarried. It was his new wife who helped Ben get in touch with the information he had been searching for his entire life.

CONNECTING ROOTS

Connecting Roots is a non-profit organization whose mission is to reunite adoptees with their biological Chilean families. Tyler Graf is the organization’s president and CEO.

“We first heard about it because my wife Amy saw an article online about the stolen children and it mentioned Tyler and Connecting Roots. We forwarded it straight to Ben. He got in touch with Tyler and that’s how this started,” David said.

“I started Connecting Roots in 2021, in December, after I found out about my background and that I had in fact been abducted,” Graf said.

He is a firefighter in Houston and during his training he met a group of Chilean firefighters.

“I had never met a Chilean before in my life. All of a sudden there was a big group of them and they were firefighters and we started talking about my adoption and they asked if I knew anything about Chile or if I spoke Spanish or if I knew anything about my biological family. It was all one big, loud and clear ‘No,’” Graf said.

Graf said he had already dedicated his life to helping others when he joined the Houston Fire Department, but learning more about his biological family made him even more motivated to take action.

“After I discovered my backstory, I felt the need to channel all of those emotions into something positive because holding on to the anger and everything that had happened to me was obviously not going to be beneficial,” Graf said. He felt he needed to use his platform to help others, like Ben.

After Ben contacted Connecting Roots, it took just two weeks to find his birth family. Reconnecting families is something Graf prides himself on.

“Everyone deserves that opportunity to learn about their past, but sometimes it just doesn’t happen and after these firefighters found my family in Chile, it brings up a lot of emotions for all of us adoptees,” Graf said. “It’s a whirlwind. First of all, it’s, ‘How is this even possible?’ There’s denial. There’s happiness. Of course, there’s sadness that this happened and also anger comes up.”

SYSTEMIC REMOVAL OF CHILDREN

As Graf continued to peel back the layers, he discovered that his forced adoption was part of the atrocities committed by a dictatorship that systematically took children from their mothers.

“The Pinochet dictatorship, one of the plans was to exterminate the poor population, or the indigenous population, or the single mothers as well. And part of that was to take the children and get them out of the country, but also make some money doing it. And it was a bad plan and it hurt a lot of people,” Graf said.

The atrocities committed by that regime were recognized in June, when Chile’s President Gabriel Boric Font delivered his 2024 public report – the Chilean State of the Union Address.

“We have created an interinstitutional table to address – and this is very serious and little known – the forced or irregular adoptions that have been taking place in Chile for decades, from the 1960s to the late 1990s. It is estimated that more than 20,000 people have been affected, and after that there are families that need support to come back together and get to know each other, their own history and identity,” said Boric Font.

TRUTH REVEALED

David said the adoption seemed legal. “If we had any idea that this wasn’t a legitimate adoption, we would never have considered it for one second,” David said.

But as Ben uncovered the complexities of his life story with the help of Connecting Roots, he learned more about the suspicious circumstances surrounding his adoption, the heartbreaking background of his happy family.

While his adoptive family enjoyed life with their son in the Capital District, celebrating holidays and throwing birthday parties, the one who loved him most – the one who brought him into the world, who wanted to hold him and care for him – never got the chance.

Ben discovered the lies in government documents. The story they told him and his adoptive parents was far from the truth. The shocking truth? Ben was only a few months old when he was kidnapped and trafficked.

Like Tyler, Ben’s adoption was forced. His biological family never voluntarily gave him up for adoption. He was only a few months old when he was kidnapped from a hospital in Chile and adopted by a loving and unsuspecting Colonie couple.

“My brother took me to the hospital one day because I was having trouble breathing and that was the last time they saw me,” Ben said.

He went from being an only child here in the US to discovering he had seven biological siblings – and a dozen nieces and nephews – in Chile, all of whom had been searching for him since he was abducted in 1988. He describes the lies the hospital told his biological family.

“I was moved from department to department. They didn’t really get a straight answer,” Ben said.

He contacted his biological family in July 2023 and discovered that his biological mother Maria Margarita Vera Vera had suffered unimaginable pain. She was deeply affected by his abduction.

“Because I was lost and she obviously couldn’t find me. That led her to start drinking and unfortunately she drank herself to death,” Ben said.

Maria passed away in 2000, but Ben only learned of her passing last year when he first connected with his biological family via Zoom.

“From what I was told, they were looking for me after they lost me and they couldn’t really find me. I think they ran into some dead ends,” Ben said.

But they didn’t know he wasn’t in the country. He wasn’t even on the same continent anymore. He was in a whole other hemisphere – in the Empire State.

RECONNECTION IN CHILE

Ben wants to learn more about his family, but that’s difficult because he doesn’t speak Spanish. Still, Ben said they’re relieved to finally be reunited.

He wants to learn more about who his biological mother was, but said he will slowly peel back those layers and talk to his family about it when they are ready. He noted that it is still difficult for the family to talk about it.

“She was worried about what happened to Ben and what they did to him? She always had that worry. And then she passed away and took all that worry and sadness to her grave,” said Ben’s biological sister Margarita, who witnessed the traditional way his family tends to his biological mother’s grave.

“It was definitely good to say, here I am home. Hopefully she knows that I am safe now and that we are all together,” Ben said.

While in Chile, he met his family and the small town where he was said to have grown up. He discovered that the family was searching for him under his biological name, Gustavo Alfonso Figueroa Vera.

“I learned that they absolutely did not stop looking for me,” Ben said. “When social media came to Chile — Facebook and all that, every new platform they could get their hands on — they would look up my Chilean name. Unfortunately, they would not find anything because I am not going to go there.”

While he was in Chile, they played video games on a new arcade game the family had bought for his visit. They had a picnic by a beautiful river. And Ben said there were lots of hugs all week.

Ben, who currently lives in Watervliet, says he is looking forward to visiting his biological family in Chile and creating new, happy memories.

Connecting Roots has footed the bill to reunite families. In February, they were able to fund trips for eight adoptees, five of whom met their biological families for the first time, including Ben. Graf said the organization is exploring legal action and working with government agencies to reunite families.