--- title: Ohio Woman Discovers Work Colleague Is Her Birth Mom description: They had been living six blocks away from each other canonical: https://time.com/3826490/ohio-woman-colleague-birth-mom/ author: TIME article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2015-04-17T14:31:05.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:18:51.382Z og:title: Ohio Woman Discovers Work Colleague Is Her Birth Mom og:description: They had been living six blocks away from each other og:url: https://time.com/3826490/ohio-woman-colleague-birth-mom/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Ohio Woman Discovers Work Colleague Is Her Birth Mom twitter:description: They had been living six blocks away from each other twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Ohio Woman Discovers Work Colleague Is Her Birth Mom > Sponsored content. 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The Brief is available free at time.com/newsletters, where readers can select it along with any of TIME's other six newsletters. There is no subscription required to receive it. #### Is The Brief free? Yes. The Brief is a free daily email newsletter from TIME. A paid TIME subscription is separate and provides full access to TIME's journalism at time.com/subscribe-agent. #### Who writes The Brief? The Brief is led by editor Richard Hall and draws on reporting from TIME's newsroom. Every edition is assembled by TIME editors rather than generated automatically. by [Caitlin Keating / People](https://time.com/author/people/) ## Caitlin Keating / People Contributor Apr 17, 2015 2:31 PM UTC by [Caitlin Keating / People](https://time.com/author/people/) ## Caitlin Keating / People Contributor Apr 17, 2015 2:31 PM UTC It was the last thing La-Sonya Mitchell-Clark expected when she decided to track down her birth mother – she discovered they weren’t strangers, but shockingly, work colleagues. The 38-year-old from Youngtown, Ohio, learned her mother was Francine Simmons after the Ohio Department of Health released birth records last month for those born between Jan. 1, 1964 and Sept. 18, 1996, according to [WYTV](http://wytv.com/2015/04/15/youngstown-mother-and-daughter-reunited/). After she looked her name up on Facebook and saw that they both worked at the same company, Infocision, she knew who she was right away. “There’s a Francine that works at my job. She works in VR and she works at the front desk,” Mitchell-Clark told the news outlet. Throughout the years, Simmons wanted to know who her daughter was, but after becoming pregnant when she was 14, she put her in a girls’ home. “I’m still in shock. It’s amazing,” Simmons told the news outlet. They connected over a phone call, and the rest is history. “She called me and I said, ‘Is this Ms. Francine?’ She said, yes. I said, ‘I think I’m your daughter’,” Mitchell-Clark said. Mitchell-Clark also discovered that she and her mother live six blocks away from each other and that she has three sisters. “Now, we’ve got a bigger extended family where we can just be together,” Francis Simmons told WYTV about reconnecting with her daughter. The icing on the cake? One of those sisters works at the same company as well. “It’s just amazing that all this time we’re thinking about her and trying to find her and she was trying to find us, too,” said one of her sisters, Maisha Cummings. _This_ [_article_](http://www.people.com/article/mother-daughter-reconnect-working-at-same-company) _originally appeared on_ [_People.com_](http://www.people.com)_._ ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3826490/ohio-woman-colleague-birth-mom/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3826490/ohio-woman-colleague-birth-mom/"},"headline":"Ohio Woman Discovers Work Colleague Is Her Birth Mom","datePublished":"2015-04-17T14:31:05.000Z","dateModified":"2026-04-13T07:18:51.382Z","description":"They had been living six blocks away from each other","url":"https://time.com/3826490/ohio-woman-colleague-birth-mom/","keywords":["Newsfeed","Family","Bizarre"],"thumbnailUrl":"","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Caitlin Keating / People"}],"articleSection":"","image":[],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/tag/time-section-newsfeed/","name":"Newsfeed"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3826490/ohio-woman-colleague-birth-mom/","name":"Ohio Woman Discovers Work Colleague Is Her Birth Mom"}}]}] ```