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Adopted man finds birth mother works at same DIY store

A man's long search for his birth mother ended at an incredible place: the home-improvement store where he works.

Steve Flaig had met Christine Tallady after she started working at Lowe's several months ago, but it was only recently that the 22-year-old delivery driver figured out she was his mother. It took him a few weeks to give her the news.

"I would walk by her, look at her from a distance, not knowing how to approach her," Flaig told the Grand Rapids Press in a story published on Wednesday.

With support from his adoptive parents, Flaig had asked the agency, DA Blodgett for Children, for information on his birth mother when he turned 18. Tallady, who was single and not ready to be a mother when she gave birth to Flaig in 1985, had left the record open, figuring he would want to contact her one day.

Flaig received information, including Tallady's name, but Internet searches turned up nothing.

In October, Flaig looked at the paperwork again and realized he had been spelling Tallady's surname wrong. He soon came up with an address less than 1.6km from the Lowe's in Plainfield Township.

When he mentioned it to his boss, she said: "You mean Chris Tallady, who works here?"

Tallady, head cashier at the Lowe's, was astonished to learn that the son she had given up for adoption 22 years earlier was a co-worker.

"I started crying," Tallady, 45, said. "I figured he would call me sometime, but not like this."
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