In 2013, Cassandra Madison, a 36-year-old ER technician, met Julia Tinetti, 34, while she was working at a restaurant in Connecticut. The two quickly became close and joked that they were “twins.”
Madison, who was adopted from the Dominican Republic, then discovered that Tinetti was also adopted from the same country, but she disregarded any possibility that they might have been related because their adoption documents didn’t match.
In 2019, Madison met her biological father, Adriano Luna, in the Dominican Republic thanks to a DNA kit. Two years later, Luna revealed to her that he and his wife, Juliana, had placed another girl up for adoption.
Madison subsequently begged Tinetti in Connecticut to undergo a DNA test, and the two later found out that they were actually sisters.
Indeed, it all ended with smiles at the time, but the joy they had was about to grow even more.
This summer, the two sisters learned through another test that Thomas Buonaguirio, Madison’s elementary school friend with whom she grew up in Connecticut a mere fifteen minutes away, is their biological brother.
Before this, Madison knew both of them were adopted from the Dominican Republic, and even though someone from the adoption agency that worked with Madison’s family had suggested that she and Buonaguirio might be related, Madison was unsure for decades since “nobody had proof that we were brother and sister.” “Nobody had paperwork,” she said.
In 2019, she asked her father about Buonaguirio. However, her father claimed that he had never put a baby boy up for adoption. Madison still had a strong suspicion that she might be related to Buonaguirio, but she never pursued it due to a lack of evidence.
She told People, “I didn’t want to drag him into something that may not be true. I didn’t want this big mystery. I didn’t want to bring it up.”
And for years she didn’t.
Then, unexpectedly, in the spring, Madison’s husband Aaron asked whether she had spoken with Buonaguirio. She had mostly lost touch with him by then, but she contacted him again on social media and asked if he would be open to taking a DNA test, which he gladly did.
Buonaguirio, a mechanic in Hutto, Texas, recounted, “Of course I was intrigued. It was kind of a roller coaster of emotion.”
The test confirmed that they were siblings. How Buonaguirio was adopted from the Dominican Republic is still unknown though, as Madison’s father had insisted that he was unaware of the boy’s existence. The siblings’ biological mother, who passed away in 2015, separated from their father for some time, and the siblings suspect that after the separation, their mother traveled out of town, gave birth to Buonaguirio, and then placed him for adoption under a different last name.
As of right now, he has reestablished contact with Madison and developed a new relationship with Tinetti.
Tinetti, who now works with individuals who have brain injuries and spinal cord injuries, told the outlet, “As soon as I saw him [Buonaguirio], I was like, ‘Oh my God, that’s me with a beard’. This has been so crazy. This whole story has been wild. I didn’t think it could get any crazier.”
Meanwhile, Madison is working to arrange a family get-together in the Dominican Republic so that Buonaguirio can meet his biological father and his seven siblings.
She expressed, “I really do feel like everything happens the way that it’s supposed to.”
