Inspired by Athena and aided by Facebook: an Internet search took a pair of strangers to sisters; roommates, and business partners.

• Author: Schabauer, Rosalia
• Position: Social Media

Growing up on opposite sides of the country, their lives were as opposite as night and day. Rosalia Schabauer was raised in Peru and Florida with married parents, attended private school, and always thought she was an only child Karla Inchingalo had a single, drug-addicted mom and spent much of her life in group homes and juvenile halls in the San Francisco Bay area Their lives did not intersect until Inchingalo began to search for the father she never knew....

Karla's mother was dating a man and became pregnant. She never told him of the pregnancy and they parted ways before she began to show. After Karla was born, mother and daughter moved to California The father, meanwhile, got married and the couple had Rosalia Neither knew (at that time) of the existence of the father's first born, Karla. The family eventually settled in Florida altlwugh the couple ultimately split up. Years later, Karla determined to uncover her roots, had nothing to go on but her father's name, so she took to Facebook....

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Rosalia. Growing up as the only child of high school sweethearts in Peru, I always thought I was the only one of all my cousins who did not have siblings. My mother always said I was the epitome of "only child syndrome." At times, I longed for a sibling, someone who would understand me, a partner in crime for all the out-of-the-box ideas I thought of. On most occasions, though, I could convince my cousins to play along with my imaginative adventures.

I grew up very happy and in a loving home. My father left Peru for Florida when I was a young girl; my mother and I followed him a few years later. At the age of eight, I arrived in Florida, and was excited to live with both of my parents for the first time in years. The only English I knew was from my second-grade English classes in private school in Peru. It took me three weeks to be able to speak English fluently. My parents had to work hard, but life was good. I was blindsided when my dad walked out--I was 12 years old, and ready to rebel for attention.

The harder time I would give my amazing single mother the more she would encourage my dad to spend time with me. Eventually, she thought a more-personalized education would benefit me and I was sent to live with my grandparents back in Peru a few months after my 16th birthday. I was supposed to be gone for two years and I ended up staying for four; my grandparents were strict but, by that time, they were home to me. However, after my mother had a brain mass removed, I came back in November 2007 to live in Florida.

I was 25 years old when my life changed forever. It was New Year's Eve, and I was working late. I was ready to close up and head home when I received a Facebook message from a woman named Karla [Inchingalo]--we had no mutual friends; her name did not sound familiar, and she was located in part of California that my parents or I had never visited. The message she sent me was very straightforward and came without precedent.

The very first sentence...