Karen Palmer

And the girls were laughing.

And what it was, was they wanted Vinnie to formally adopt them.

We had never done that because we didn't want...

our names all associated with each other in case he was looking for us.

So,

You know, it was a very emotional Christmas, lots of, you know, crying, and I don't know, it was lovely.

After dinner, the three of them went out for a walk, and I was sitting in the living room and looking at this guidebook, and all of a sudden I thought, oh, but what about Gil?

Like, what does it mean for the birth father?

Are they going to have to contact him?

You know, what...

What does all this mean?

And, you know, I'm looking through the index and I found, well, they're adults, so they don't have to get in contact with him.

And I was reassured by that, but he was absolutely on my mind.

Later that night, Karen couldn't sleep.

So I got up and I went into my office and booted up the computer and ran a Google search on him.

And initially, all that came up was the same stuff that always comes up, which is very little.

And then I thought I would add a search term, Santa Maria.

And what came up was...

a little article that had appeared in the Santa Maria paper about a man, a homeless man, who'd been found dead in a local park.

And it turned out that that person was Gil.