Amazing moment son stolen at birth hugs his mother for the first time as they are reunited after 42 years
Jimmy Thyden, 42, was captured on tape weeping as he embraced his mother, Maria Angelica Gonzalez, during their first ever face-to-face meeting at her home in Valdivia, Chile. ‘Hola, mama. I love you very much,’ he was heard saying to her through tears
A mother and son were reunited for the first time since he was born, 42 years after hospital worker lied and told her he had died in order to exploit him for a country-wide child-trafficking scandal that rocked Chile for decades.
Jimmy Thyden, 42, was captured on tape weeping as he embraced his mother, Maria Angelica Gonzalez, during their first ever face-to-face meeting at her home in Valdivia, Chile on August 17.
‘Hola, mama. I love you very much,’ he was heard saying to her through tears.
His refound family greeted him, and for the first time in decades, he was reunited with his blood relatives, made up of his mother, four brothers and a sister.
Jimmy, a criminal defense attorney from Ashburn, Virginia, was greeted with 42 balloons, to signify the time he spent separated from his Chilean family: ‘There is an empowerment in popping those balloons, empowerment in being there with your family to take inventory of all that was lost.’
He was also seen tightly hugging two of his long-lost brothers, Pablo Leiva Gonzalez and Jonathan Gonzalez.
The attorney, who brought his wife Johannah, and their two daughters, Ebba Joy, 8, left, and Betty Grace, 5, with him, was overwhelmed by the meeting.
‘It knocked the wind out of me. I was suffocated by the gravity of this moment,’ he said in an interview after the meeting.
‘How do you hug someone in a way that makes up for 42 years of hugs?’
He recounted the first time he spoke to his long-lost mother: ‘Mijo (son) you have no idea the oceans I’ve cried for you.