Kelly Grace is DNAngels Associate Director of Administration and serves the Board as Secretary. She is a native of the Midwest, having grown up in Ohio and Wisconsin. She grew up knowing that she was a much-wanted child, because her mother defied medical advice by both getting pregnant and then giving birth to her while terminally ill. Her mother passed away when Kelly Grace was five years old, and she was raised by her father and stepmother. She did not realize until she was 46 years old that her beloved father who raised her was not her biological father and that her mother had taken extraordinary measures to bring her into this world. While searching for her father’s estranged family, she found a half-sister, although it took some time to make the connection.
Kelly Grace met Laura Leslie-Olmsted in November 2018 when they were paired together as search angels for a support group. They instantly bonded and, together with their team, found over 100 biological mothers and fathers for clients between November 2018 and June 2019. She was DNAngels original research assistant but has since become a Genetic Genealogist in her own right. She has been interviewed by the New York Times, and featured on the NPE Stories, Pulled by the Root and Everything’s Relative Podcasts.
Kelly Grace grew up with an exceptionally large, extended Italian family where she is the baby of her generation. Her grandparents came to this country separately from the same village in Sicily and met while her Uncle Ted was fleeing the police on a motorcycle with a very pregnant wife in the side car. The blew a tire going over railroad tracks in rural Ohio and the man who came out of a nearby house to assist invited them for lunch. Before he knew it, his kindness was returned by being engaged to his new-found friend’s 14-year-old sister!
Kelly Grace lives in a rural town south of Atlanta with her husband, Len, and her clowder of special need cats. She has many years of experience tracking down missing people. She began in 1995 tracking down retired podiatrists for the APMA. She now works as a Family Law and Estate Paralegal. She can now add the tale of her conception to her collection of odd paternity stories. In her free time, she enjoys photography, traveling, her Lime Green Jeep, Tudor history, the Beatles, hats and car selfies, word etymology, making vats of homemade spaghetti sauce and good chocolate.
