During recent beauty shop appointment, women discover stunning family connection

Well-known Gainesville hairstylist Michelle Anderson doesn't know exactly when or where she was born or who her birth parents were. When she was a toddler, she was found wandering the streets of a Korean city – she doesn't know which one. She's been told that a police officer picked her up and looked around for someone who might know her but found no one. Eventually, she was placed in an orphanage.

In November 1975, she was adopted by a couple who lived in northern California. Her adoptive mom is Australian, and her adoptive father is Chinese-Malaysian. The couple already had a biological son and daughter; Michelle was told she was adopted because "my older sister wanted a little sister." Later Michelle's parents would have another biological daughter, her younger sister. 

She has no memories of the flight that took her and "a bunch of other adoptees" from Korea to Alaska, where her adoptive mother met her and then took her home to California. It's estimated that she was about 3 1/2 years old then. 

Michelle doesn't remember any of that time surrounding her adoption. She knows she was adopted with love, but it had to have been traumatic for a toddler to have endured the long flights and then be handed over to someone she didn't know. Her mother told her that on that first day, as they prepared to fly from Alaska to California, after her mother changed clothes, Michelle didn't recognize her. When she tried to pick Michelle up, "I bit her," she said. 

Growing up in California, Michelle had a happy childhood. She left high school early, after a year of homeschooling for her junior year, and received her GED. She's on good terms with her family and is very close to her adoptive mother. "My mom and I talk all the time," she said.  

With this kind of background – a Korean orphan raised in California by multinational parents, it seems a little unlikely that Michelle would end up hundreds of miles from California in a rather remote, sparsely populated place such as Ozark County. 

And it seems even more unlikely that she would encounter anyone here who has any kind of biological family connection to her. But that's what happened.

The surprising encounter happened last month when Michelle was getting acquainted with Terry Easley, a new client at Michelle's Shear Artistry beauty shop on Third Street.

"We talked about me being adopted from Korea," Michelle recalled, "and she said, 'Oh, one of my cousins adopted some boys from Japan. I think they're from Japan. Or maybe it was Korea. Oh yeah, they're Korean.'"

Terry told Michelle the adopted boys' names, and, as unfathomable as it seems, one of them, Spencer (we'll just use a single name here), was a name Michelle recognized. She made sure she had heard it right and then told Terry, "I know Spencer. I'm pretty sure he's my distant cousin," she said.

The connection stunned them.

Michelle’s journey

It wasn't the dramatic discovery of a long-lost parent or blood-related sibling, but still, it seems remarkable that, in our tiny, tucked-away town in the Ozarks, a Korean native who grew up in California would cross paths with a woman who grew up in Illinois and now has a relative there who adopted the other woman's distant cousin, also from Korea. 

It's one of those crazy "coincidents" that Terry doesn't believe is coincidental. Instead, she says, "People are put in your life for a reason. You may never know why at the time, and then, later, it becomes clear why that person needed you or you needed them." 

Maybe Michelle and Terry didn't exactly "need" each other (except that Terry needed a hairstylist and Michelle welcomes new clients). But it's fun to consider how their very different journeys through several decades of life (Michelle is 53, Terry is 62) brought them together to discover a family connection they never could have expected.

Here's how it came about: 

Michelle grew up in California and got her cosmetology license when she was 18. She worked in hair salons there and also waitressed at a five-star restaurant. One of her close friends wanted her to meet the friend's cousin from Minnesota, a carpenter who was doing subcontractor work on a nearby construction project. That's how she met Jesse Anderson in 2000.

They dated and became engaged, and in 2001, Jesse brought Michelle to Ozark County, where his parents had settled after moving from Minnesota, and where he and his brother Bill had a mobile home, although Jesse was still working in California at the time.

Michelle liked Ozark County. "I thought it seemed like a good place to raise a family," she said.  

During that visit, "Jesse's mom said, 'You guys should get married,'" she said. 

And that's what they did. 

In 2001, Missouri still had a mandatory three-day waiting period between the time couples filed for a marriage license and actually got married. Michelle and Jesse didn't have that much time here on that visit, so they drove to Mountain Home, Arkansas (where there was no mandatory three-day waiting period) and found a Justice of the Peace. Michelle can't remember her name, but she married them at her home. 

They celebrated their 24th wedding anniversary in July.

In November 2001, Jesse and Michelle Anderson settled in Ozark County permanently, and they've been here ever since, both with full-time jobs (Jesse as a carpenter, working with his brothers and other family members, and Michelle as a hairstylist, first renting space in others' shops and, since 2011, owning her own salon). 

Despite their full-time jobs, Michelle and Jesse successfully raised and homeschooled two sons: Zane, now 22, and Ian, 20. Zane was completely homeschooled and is now a college student studying biochemistry and business in Texas. Ian was homeschooled except for his last two years, which he completed at Gainesville High School. He's now studying business marketing at Missouri State University in Springfield.

Like many people, Michelle was curious about her background. In 2017, Michelle submitted a DNA sample to 23 and Me, a DNA-testing service that has since gone out of business. 

The test results showed the names of other 23 and Me clients who shared some of Michelle's genetic makeup – meaning they were somehow related, at least a little bit. Michelle has connected with some of them through an online Korean-adoptee group. One of the cousins she has communicated with fairly often is Terry's cousin's adopted son Spencer, now in his 40s. 

That day at Michelle's shop, when Terry mentioned Spencer's name, Michelle quickly opened up the Facebook app on her phone, flipped to the page showing her Facebook "friends" - and there was Spencer. 

Terry’s journey

Terry almost didn't get the hair appointment with Michelle that's given the two women such a happy spark of connectedness. 

She and her husband, Dan, are part-time residents of Theodosia, where they've owned a cabin in Marina Hills at the Theodosia Marina Resort since 2017. Before that, they were campers at the Corps of Engineers Park adjoining TMR. And for many years before that, even before Dan and Terry were married in 1999, Dan Easley and friends made an annual fishing trip to Bull Shoals Lake, always staying at a resort on Noland's Point, near Ocie. 

The men traveled from the St. Charles-Defiance area west of St. Louis each year, Terry said, "but all that time, they never went into Theodosia."

Dan Easley is apparently no relation to the late Forest and Marilyn Easley, who were longtime well-known Theodosia residents. 

Then, after they were married, Dan invited Terry to come along on the fishing trip to Bull Shoals Lake.

"I was reluctant," Terry said, "but I agreed to come, and we camped on Corps property at Theodosia. We loved it and camped there a couple more times."

The Easleys had reservations to camp there again in summer 2017, but the Corps campground at Theodosia was closed during some of the most disastrous flooding Ozark County had suffered in decades. Instead, they rented an RV-parking space from Theodosia Marina Resort. While they were there, they noticed the small houses on Marina Hill.

"We thought, 'Man, it would be so cool to have one of those cabins,'" Terry said. 

They discovered that one of the cabins was for sale, bought it, built on an addition, and they've been enjoying summertime visits there ever since, often sharing the space with some of their five children and their families, including the Easleys' 10 grandchildren.

Dan and Terry left Defiance a few years ago and now have a permanent home in Punta Gorda, Florida. The neighborhood association on Marina Hill prohibits full-time residency; the cabins are vacation homes only. But the Easleys love spending their summers in Theodosia and sometimes slip back for a few days during wintertime too. 

This summer, Terry learned that her former hairstylist back home had retired, so she needed a new stylist here. One night when she and Dan boated to Theodosia for dinner at Just Jackie's, she asked her waitress-friend there for a recommendation, and the friend suggested Michelle. But Terry forgot the name by the time they got back to their cabin. The next time they were at Just Jackie's, she asked her friend again, and this time the friend wrote it down. "But do you think I had that paper when we got back to Theodosia? No!" Terry said. 

Terry and Missy Grisham had become friends when Missy's husband, Ray, was doing concrete work for the Easleys as they were expanding their cabin. When Terry asked her, Missy recommended Michelle also, and finally, a week or so before she and Dan were scheduled to head back to Florida for a while, Terry managed to save Michelle's contact information long enough to text-message her, asking for a simple color-toner appointment. 

But Michelle texted back that she was fully booked all the days before the Easleys were leaving. 

Disappointed, Terry was wondering what she could do when Michelle called her. "Can you come tonight at 6:45?" Michelle asked. 

Terry was impressed that Michelle would offer to work late to fit her in. Of course she could come! 

When she arrived that evening, Michelle analyzed Terry's hair and recommended a more time-consuming treatment. Again, Terry was impressed that Michelle would stay even later than first expected. When Michelle asked Terry if she had time to stay late too, Terry, 62, answered, "I'm retired. I have all the time in the world!"

That gave the two women a little more time to discover their shared family connection. 

When Terry reached out to Spencer, her cousin's adopted Korean son who shares some of Michelle's DNA, she learned he was, ironically, out of the country, in Korea, teaching English classes to high school students while also learning about his birth country and enjoying the area. 

He responded to Terry's texts, happily surprised that she had met one of his DNA cousins in a faraway place he'd never heard of. Michelle agrees that it's been a pretty amazing experience, whether it's a coincidence, or, as Terry believes, it happened for a reason.