Reunited, and it feels good
Metro
By Jeff Hodson

After 27 years, mom and daughter meet up in Van
It was Mother’s Day when LuAn Mitchell-Halter received the call that would change her life — a reunion with the daughter she had given up for adoption 27 years before.

“I thought, what the heck? Why not? Life is just too darn short,” said Jaki Laga, who reunited with Mitchell-Halter, her birth mother, this weekend in Vancouver.

“I called her on Mothers’ Day because what better time to hear her voice, reconnect and move forward with some extra excitement and joy in my life.”

Mitchell-Halter, who was a single teenaged mother in Saskatoon when she gave Laga up for adoption, said hearing her daughter’s voice was a powerful experience.

Mitchell-Halter, who has an adopted son, said she didn’t want to interfere in her daughter’s life, out of love and respect for Laga’s adoptive parents.

Laga tracked her birth mother through the Internet, and eventually contacted Mitchell-Halter’s sister (and executive assistant).

In a weird twist of fate, the pair actually ran into each other years earlier, when Mitchell-Halter, a successful businesswoman, motivational speaker and author, spoke to Laga’s class in Wayburn, Sask.

At the time, the pair made the connection, an event that Laga said left her “shaking like a leaf.”

Mitchell-Halter even had coffee with Laga’s adoptive parents, but was called away to care for her ailing husband.