Tamara and Adriana’s adoptive fathers both died a few years before they met.
When Tamara Rabi met Adriana Scott at a local McDonalds restaurant, their lives changed forever. ‘I didn’t know what to say except “hi”. I was just so shocked - it was like seeing myself,’ says Adriana. They were both students at neighbouring universities in Long Island, New York, and they had grown up only 30 kilometres apart. They shared a birthday, they were exactly the same height and both loved hip hop. But the most important thing they shared was the same Mexican mother. Both girls grew up knowing that their mother had given them up for adoption when they were born, but they had no idea they had an identical twin. Then, Justin Lattore, a friend of Adriana’s, went to Tamara’s twentieth birthday party. When he walked in and saw Tamara, he couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘I was just shocked - she looked so much like Adriana,’ says Justin. Then it got clearer - they had to be sisters. In fact, Tamara had already noticed that strangers on her university campus often smiled and said hello, clearly mistaking her for someone else.
Following the birthday, Justin put the two girls in touch and they arranged the McDonald's meeting by email. ‘As she came towards me, she was walking like me, talking like me,’ says Tamara. ‘We have the same mannerisms, the same interests, and got the same grades at school,’ adds Adriana. The girls even discovered that as children they had often had the same nightmare: of a really loud noise followed by a very quiet one. They had another sad factor in common. Both of their adoptive fathers had died a few years before they met.
Now the twins are finishing their studies, and they meet often. ‘I feel like she’s my sister, but our relationship right now is more like friends,’ says Tamara. She’s optimistic and excited that their futures will be together: ‘We will always have each other. We don’t have any others brothers and sisters - we’ll grow old together!’.