After 70th Birthday, Grand Prairie Man Discovers He Was Switched at Birth

A North Texas father-daughter duo used a popular DNA testing kit to unlock a medical mystery.

They learned he was switched at birth more than 70 years ago.

Andy Perkins credits his daughter, Candi Summers, for rooting out a medical mix-up that changed the course of his life. She had given him an ancestry DNA testing kit for his 70th birthday as part of her years-long project to map out the Perkins family tree.

When her father's results came in, there was not a single reference to any other Perkins, not even his own parents. As she continued digging for answers into her father's roots, the last name "Robinson" started appearing.

"I was comparing that to my Perkins family tree and these families were living in a lot of the same geographic areas at the same time, but I could not find a connection," said Summers.

"I had no surnames in common with any of those family trees and I was like, 'that's impossible,'" she added.

She had finally gathered enough evidence, including DNA test results from various family members, to conclude that her father wasn't biologically related to anyone with the last name of Perkins, not even the couple who raised him.

"It was really scary because I didn't know what it meant. Also, just having that information that doesn't tell you how it happened, who his biological family is, what's even going on. It's just more questions," said Summers.

In search of answers, Candi referred back to a copy of her father's birth announcement from 1950, printed in a local newspaper.

Two babies were born one day a part in that small New York hospital. Those two babies were named Andy Perkins and Phillip Robinson.

"At that moment, it really snapped for me because all of a sudden, I was like, 'he was accidentally switched to birth in the hospital.' That was the light bulb," said Summers. "I absolutely knew I needed to tell my dad."

Perkins said he didn't believe his daughter at first.

However, she had researched his biological mother and was about to find a picture of her to show to her father.

"I cried the instant I saw that picture. I knew she was my mother," said Perkins. "I had her hair and her profile. She was my mom. It was really special. It still gets me. It was one of the most special moments of my life," he said.

Perkins says he had always felt there was something different about him growing up.

"I never felt like I belonged. I used to joke with people and show them a picture of my family and say, 'who doesn't look like the other?' said Perkins.

He has blue eyes and light-colored hair, compared to the rest of his family, whose features included brown eyes and dark hair.

He also said his interests and characteristics were different than his siblings.

"I have been in therapy many times over my identity and as I look back, I had the same identity problems that many adopted children have, except I knew I wasn't adopted," he added.

Never could he have imagined he was switched at birth.

Both he and Summers believe it was a pure accident but the revelation meant they had an entirely different family, who had no clue of their existence.

That was about to change.

Ready to meet their new family, Summers made and shared a video with some of the Robinsons whom she had contacted during her detective work.

Word quickly got to Andy Perkin's biological sister Sally Holley in Colorado.

"It was absolutely shocking to me," said Holley about receiving the news.

She says her brother Phillip, the other baby born the same time as Perkins, had died of cancer when he was just 6 years old.

Perkin's biological parents had also passed away a few years back.

Holley was the first blood relative to meet her long-lost brother.

"It was the most bizarre, crazy, exciting thing to see this brother, who reminded me of my mother, reminded me of my father, was about the same size as one of my brothers. It was just a wild feeling, and emotional," said Holley.

Perkins has now met all of his siblings.

In fact, the Perkins and Robinsons have begun annual family reunions.

Perhaps the other most challenging part of the revelation was sharing the news with Shirley Perkins, the mother who raised him.

"We told her everything that was going on, showed her pictures. She just, she had dabbed her eyes a few times and she said, 'Well, isn't God good?' That was her reaction," said Perkins.

Her reaction, he said, added to the sense of peace Perkins now feels about the accidental mix-up at birth.

"I have two huge, wonderful families. I'm just so blessed," said Perkins.

Historians say incidents of babies being switched at birth were likely more common than most think, but it's impossible to know how often it happened.