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About Oregon daily emerald. (Eugene, Or.) 1920-2012 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 29, 1997)
Woman finds family she never knew —online ■ INTERNET: A woman was reunited with her father and three half-sisters By Meredith May The Associated Press BAY POINT, Calif. — America Online is in the doghouse with many of its customers, but for one woman the Internet provider made an online connection that changed her life forever. Kathryn Virello was born 25 years ago after a love affair be tween her mother and a married man. When she went online, she found the father and three half-sis ters she had never met. In minutes, the computer found the family Virello had been seeking for years. Until she first started exploring the Internet in December, all Virello had to unlock the secret of her past was a dogeared photo of her dad, his name and a book ti tled, “You Too Can Find Any one.” After a flurry of “are you my sis ter?” e-mail messages, not all of which got through the belea guered AOL network, the family reunited electronically Jan. 19. From her sisters, Virello got her dad’s phone number in Las Vegas. It took her a day to summon the courage to call. “I’m surprised it took 25 years for her call,” said her father, John Lattimer. “I always expected this. I wasn’t hiding, but I wasn’t looking for her because 1 didn’t know if she thought someone else was her fa ther, and I didn’t want to compli cate things, so I waited.” Friday, Virello made friends with two of her three sisters, Shan non Evans of Palm Springs, and Carrie Craig of Washington. Evans and Craig flew to San Jose and drove to meet Virello at a Concord restaurant. Trisha Lattimer could not make the reunion from her home in Portland. “Oh, my God, you’re so beauti ful,” said Virello, when her sisters walked into the restaurant. Diners looked up from their onion rings and ribs as the women cried and hugged. “Every time we got together, we'd talk about our fourth sister,” Evans said. “We wondered where she was, what she was like. There was always this missing link, and now we’ve found her.” Evans and Craig brought Virello a pearl and silver broach that be longed to their great-grandmother and a book with photographs of the sisters. They spent dinner ex plaining to Virello her relation to the people in the pictures. When Virello was a girl, she thought one of her mother’s boyfriends was her father. Later, her mother said her father was dead. At 13, she learned the truth at a family gathering, but was told her father was a taboo subject. Virello’s search for her past be gan when she became pregnant three years ago. She had lived with only half a family, and wanted to give her child more than that, she said. Though computers make transcontinental connections in seconds, a few small miracles had to occur before Virello found her family. For one, half-sister Carrie Craig just happened to join AOL two months before Virello, who had limited her search to AOL’s mem bership. Even then, Virello would never have made the connection to Craig, because Craig hadn’t used her maiden name when she signed onto the service. Craig added Lattimer to her personal computer profile only one week before Virello began her search. Virello typed in her father’s sur name, Lattimer, and 18 people with that last name appeared on her screen. She messaged only Carrie, because she was about the same age and Virello thought her dad had once worked in Washing ton. In her e-mail, titled “NEED HELP,” Virello mentioned her fa ther was married to a woman named Loretta in the ’70s and that he had a tattoo of a fox “or some thing” on his right forearm. She sent the message at 1 a.m. Jan. 19. Twelve hours later, a scream rang out in Washington. “I was shaking so hard, I made my husband get out of the shower to type a message back to her,” Craig said. “I knew from what she’d written that she was our sis ter. Finally we could put an end to this family secret we had to keep all these years.” For most of her life, Virello lived 10 minutes from her lost relatives. Virello says she’s sad she missed out on sisterhood — swap ping clothes, talking over boy trou bles and fighting for the telephone. But she got the chance to start with a slumber party at her Bay Point home last week. Now, Virello is preparing to meet her father. Lattimer, who was a restaurant lounge owner in Washington for several years, is astounded his daughter followed an electronic trail to his door. Confession recording sealed for trial ■ COURT: The tape of an inmate’s confession to a priest will not be used in his upcoming murder trial The Associated Press SAN FRANCISCO — An Ore gon jail violated the country’s longstanding respect for religious confessions when it taped a talk between a priest and an inmate suspected of three slayings, a fed eral appeals court has ruled. The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Monday that Ore gon can no longer tape such con versations, saying that the prac tice violates federal law and the U.S. Constitution. A priest has the right to rely on “the nation’s history of respect for religion in general and respect for the sanctity of the secrets of con fession in particular,” Judge John Noonan wrote in the 3-0 decision. The ruling was applauded by the lawyer who represented the priest and the Portland Archdio cese, which sued to have the tape destroyed. “A victory for religious free dom of all members of religious faiths,” Thomas Dulcich said in describing the decision. The court, however, refused to order the destruction of the tape of the conversation between the Rev. Timothy Mockaitis and Co nan Hale at a Eugene jail, last April. That left open the possibility the tape could be used at Hale’s upcoming trial for the 1995 shoot ing deaths of three teenagers. Although the tape has been sealed, Hale stated in court docu ments that he confessed to some burglaries but denied the killings to Mockaitis. Assistant Attorney General Timothy Sylwester contended the taping was legal despite the rul ing. The priest “went to a jail, where a state law permits the in terception (of conversations) be tween an inmate and anybody who is visiting there, regardless of whether it is a priest or anybody else,’’ he said. He also claimed the matter was moot because the prosecutor who ordered the taping promised nev er to do so again. But the appeals court noted that Oregon, like all states, bars prosecutors from using confiden tial communications with a mem ber of the clergy as evidence at a trial. The court said the taping vio lated the priest’s freedom of reli gion as well as the federal Reli gious Freedom Restoration Act, which restricts a state’s infringe ments on religious exercise. The University of Oregon Crisis Center proudly presents “CONNECTIONS” The Annual Crisis Prevention Conference Saturday, February 1, 1997 Erb Memorial Union University of Oregon 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. (Registration begins at 8:30 a.m. in the EMU Ballroom Lobby) Keynote Speaker: D.«l. Morales, Director of Residence Life Topics will be: Sexual Orientation, Graduate Schools in Psychology, When Isn't A Person In Transition, An Introduction to Crisis Intervention, The Family Connection of Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender People, Developing Options to Anger, Building Communities, Sexual Assault and the Rape Culture, Suicide and Culture, The Importance of Community When Living With HIV, Conflict Management, Domestic Violence, Meditation, Making Connection Again After A Loss, The Mind/Body Connection, Yoga (Exploring the Mind/Body Connection and Using Yoga as a Tool), The Mind/Body Connections of Nutrition. Conference is available for one university credit and is also open to the general public. $15 Registration Fee You can register for credit the day of the conference. CSPY 408 CRN 22136 • CSPY 508 CRN 22141 For more information or to preregister please call the Crisis Center Business Line at 346-4487. YOU CAN READ THE EMERALD FROM ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD. o.d.e, on the world wide web: http://darkwing.uoregon.edu/~ode IT’S JUST LIKE REALLY BEING HERE, BUT WITHOUT ALL THE RAIN. w' Live Music at Clancy Thurber' \ “Craig Einhorn” Classical/ Flamenco Guitar & Pop tunes 4:30 - 6:30 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 30,1997 Free Snacks Available Sponsored by UO Cultural Forum. Oret/on {/)(///// dj/nera/cl Heart Beats only *5! • Heart Beats will run in the Emerald on VALENTINE’S DAY. • Call 346-4343 to place your Heart Beat today, or fill out this form and stop by the Emerald Classified Office: Suite 300, EMU • Deadline:1pm, Thursday, February 13th Write t/e most- trait roc adandtorn dr/ater/or two/ for ODE use only. name:___ phone:__ address: ___ payment method: cash/check/credit card _ write text here art choices: circle one (not actual sizes)
