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(CNN) — When I sent DNA samples to genetic testing services last year searching for my birth family, I had no idea it would launch me on an adventure across three continents.

In 1961, I was adopted at birth in California. Over the years, I’ve searched for my birth family on and off, but have always been stymied by sealed records and tight-lipped officials. In the last decade, however, home DNA testing and easy online access to official records have changed the game.

I spit into plastic tubes (one for each of the two big players in this industry in the United States: 23andMe and Ancestry.com), dropped them in the mail, and waited, anxiously, for the results. When the email arrived, I was stunned.

After a lifetime believing I was a basic White American, I learned that was only half true. My birth mother was born in Iowa. But it turned out my father was North African.

I reached out to anonymous DNA matches through 23andMe and Ancestry’s messaging systems, but no one replied. Then came weeks of research using Ancestry.com and various public records databases until I was able to identify both my parents and find contact information for a handful of their close relatives.

I discovered my birth father had been born in the mid-1930s in Casablanca. Romantic visions of Bogart and Bergman (fictionally) escaping the Nazis swam in my head.

Records showed he had emigrated to the US in 1959 and ended up in San Francisco. My mother had been raised in San Diego, and also moved to San…