Jason Antes was born in Great Falls in 1969 into a home with an abusive father and was removed and placed into foster care.
For the past 20 years, Antes has searched for his birth mother: "It's every adoptive or every foster child's dream is to find who their natural parents are," said Antes.
He shared a picture on Facebook featuring himself as a toddler with his two foster sisters.
His initial hope was to find his sisters, because he believed they may have information about his biological mother. The picture was shared more than 40,000 times across the country.
That's when genetic researchers Connie Hanson and Lynn Farrenkopf found out about Jason's story.
"I found Jason's story because my husband came up and started telling me about it, because he had seen it on the news," explained Farrenkopf.
Hanson plugged Antes' mother's name, father's name, and birth date into a search engine, and it worked.
"I got on newspapers.com, and researched it through there. And it took me about twenty minutes to find them," said Hanson.
Antes tells MTN that he was overwhelmed when he found out the news.
"I was really happy. I'm still a little anxious because I found out that there's some siblings out there and one of them is less than an hour away from me," said Antes.
He explained to MTN that his biological mother currently lives in Kentucky. He plans on meeting her for the first time in years this weekend over video chat.
"You know, I keep telling her look forward, don't worry about the past. I grew up okay, and everything is going to be all right," said Antes.
JANUARY 7, 2020: Massachusetts man searching for biological mother in Montana
