Melani was about twelve when she started searching for the older sister taken from their family before she was born. She called a house in Michigan from public phones and was told no one by that name lived there. She wrote to television reunion shows and searched from a library computer, year after year.

On July 18, 2020, she found an obituary with an unusual spelling of her sister's name, and sent a Facebook message: "Are you Melanie Gawlak's sister?" Saundra wrote back: "Yes. Do I know you?"