How 3 Babies Abandoned By Same Mother In The 1980s Were Reunited

HESPERIA (CBSLA.com) —  Three babies abandoned by the same mother -- all in the 1980s -- are finally reunited.

It's a follow-up to a story KCAL9's Cristy Fajardo reported more than a year ago.

When she first did the story, only two of the siblings were able to meet up.

Tonight, she tells the amazing story of how they found each other.

Janet Barnicoat's photo album has grown since her last Mother's Day

"It's been a really crazy roller coaster," she said.

But the pictures captured moments even she couldn't fathom.

It was a year and half ago that Fajardo showed you this unlikely reunion between two abandoned babies.

Now grown and reunited through an ancestry website and their DNA, her brother Dean Hundorf told Farardo at the time, "I was more interested in my ethnic makeup.This was something I would never dreamed of."

Nor did he dream he would soon find another DNA match -- a sister named Julie. They had all been abandoned at birth in Lawndale.

RELATED LINK: Abandoned As Babies, DNA Test Helps Connect Likely Siblings Years Later

"There was a connection," says Janet, "It's like we'd never been apart from each other."

But the three still had questions: Who was the mother who had left Julie at a mini market, Dean on a doorstep and Janet in a paper bag in an alley?

Old news reports showed the woman who found her. That woman's name is Joanna Hauser. The reports also show Hauser visiting the newborn at the hospital in 1981.

But the video of them reuniting would soon take on new meaning. Barnicoat would later learn that Hauser was actually her mother.

"We asked her if she loved us," Barnicoat recalls, "and she said, oh God, I thought about you every day. I loved you every day."

Hauser could not be reached for comment, but Barnicoat learned she had not been tossed away in an alley. She also found her biological father.

"I wanna say it was like a sigh of relief," Barnicoat says, "I had gone 15-20 years with that story in my head constantly, that I was tossed away, that I was thrown into a dumpster."

Barnicoat says she's forgiven Hauser who was already a single mother and struggling. She says others shouldn't judge her either.

"She did us a favor," Barnicoat says, "All three of us had amazing families."