In 1975, Chantal Doecke was evacuated from Vietnam to Australia as a newborn; 49 years later...

Chantal Doecke at Onkaparinga River in Adelaide A commercial DNA test has helped an Australian woman discover that she has a twin brother living only a short flight away. Chantal Doecke was evacuated from Saigon as a newborn in 1975 and brought to Australia during Operation Babylift, an international effort to move children out of Vietnam as the war came to an end. Doecke was taken to Adelaide in April 1975. She was carried onto the evacuation flight in a shoebox, with her umbilical cord still attached. For most of her life, she knew very little about her biological family or where she came from. Forty-nine years later, a DNA match revealed that she had a twin brother named Glenn, who was living in Brisbane. Doecke described the extraordinary discovery in a first-person account published by The Guardian as part of its “Experience” series.Evacuated in a shoeboxIn early 1975, Doecke’s adoptive parents answered an advertisement in an Australian newspaper asking families to adopt orphaned children fleeing the conflict in South Vietnam. When she arrived in South Australia, officials gave her new parents documents that listed her name as Le Thi Ha and her birth date as January. Her adopt...