VIDEO: A Houston firefighter opens up about being stolen shortly after birth and his journey to Chile to connect with the birth mother he never knew.
Before his journey, Tyler Graf said he was just an ordinary 38-year-old man with a wife and child.
"I was adopted by a very loving, caring family," Graf said. "I think it was just knowing that my story did start before I was adopted. So, it's kind of like missing the first five minutes of the movie."
After becoming a father, Graf tried to learn about his birth family. Suddenly, he got a call he never expected.
"That's when they sat me down and told me who I was, how they know who I am and what the true backstory really is," Graf said.
He had been stolen from his birth mother, who was told her son died shortly after birth.
The practice of coercive adoptions became widespread under dictator Augusto Pinochet's reign in Chile during the 1970s and 1980s.