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Gift that keeps giving: Tampa family celebrates Christmas together after online DNA test connects dad, daughter

One year ago, what seemed like a far-out fantasy has now turned into family tradition.
Credit: 10News
Gary Barnes (left) never knew he had a family. Olivia Robles spent nearly her entire life searching for her father. A chance match through an Ancestry.com DNA test connected them one year ago.

DNA ancestry test kits have become one of the more popular gifts to give for Christmas.

For Olivia Robles, the results of that test changed her life forever one year ago when it led her to the father she’d been looking for nearly her entire life.

“It’s still sometimes hard to believe,” Robles said, sitting next to her father on the living room couch.

“But it’s really setting in now since dad’s been a regular part of my life since last year.”

What seemed like a far-out fantasy has now turned into a family tradition. One year ago, Robles and Barnes met for the first time.

It started with a DNA test the mother of three submitted to Ancestry.com with the original intent to learn her true ethnicity. Robles was born in the Philippines but didn't know much about her background beyond that.

Unexpectedly, Robles wound up with a DNA match that connected her to distant cousins who helped connect the dots to a father she never knew.

Barnes, a Vietnam war veteran, spent much of his downtime during the war in the Philippines, where he met Robles' mother. But when Barnes was called back to war, they lost touch and never reconnected.

“Everything about it blows my mind still,” Barnes said as he chuckled.

The two have wasted no time making up for lost time in the past year.

“It’s come to the point where we talk at least two, three times a day and if we don’t talk it really feels strange,” Robles said.

As if they’d know each other forever, Robles said, the two hit it off right away.

“That’s just kind of one of the things that I think back like a year and a half ago, I didn’t even know my dad and now it just feels odd to not talk to him,” she said.

From birthdays to graduation days and holidays—like Christmas and Father’s Day—Robles says her three sons have taken to Barnes like a grandfather, something Barnes says he cherishes.

RELATED: 'It was a divine intervention': DNA test pairs daughter, dad for first Father's Day

“Like this morning having Christmas with grandchildren and children… to me that was something that was a real missing part of my life,” he said.

Robles recently gave her dad a video recorder to capture his thoughts and memories for a book he’s writing to pass on to his newfound grandsons and great-grandson.

“That’s something we’ll be able to have from him as a gift for us to treasure,” Robles said.

After a brief move out west for a new job—coincidentally just a few hours drive from dad—Robles returned to Florida to be near her grown sons and her grandson.

Barnes makes regular, long visits.

Unwrapping new family traditions, he says, has become the greatest gift of all.

“There’s nothing that can exceed this as far as I’m concerned,” he said.

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