Haven Vander Bie

Haven Vander Bie

Haven, 18, grew up in Chula Vista, California, about eight miles north of the border with Mexico. She was adopted in 2002 at just under a year old from the Social Welfare Institute in the city of Chaohu, Anhui Province. She is a first year student at the University of California San Diego with plans to study neuroscience.

In 2018, on a trip to visit her orphanage, Haven found her birth parents and her older sister and younger brother. The orphanage director, who was different from the director at the time of her adoption, was instrumental in their reunion.

"She I guess, was from or had some connection to the village she said I was from," Haven explains in her interview. "I guess before we arrived she had sent like a couple of people into that village to kind of find information or to just collect, I don't know, whatever she could dig up, I guess, and somehow we were given a phone number that was my biological father's, and, yeah, it was just kind of a wild goose chase for a little bit. We were just driving around everywhere going from village to village because everyone had different information but we finally go our hands on a phone number and I'm still not quite sure, My mother and I are still not quite sure about how this all happened, but we called the phone number and a man picked up and our translator and guide, Queenie, she translated for us and he was able to confirm my birthday and the place where I'm from and just kind of stuff that maybe only he'd know."

2002

Chaohu Social Welfare Institute, Anhui Province

Almost 12 months

San Diego, California