Sister, sister. Shaking up the family tree with sibling synchronicity!
A set of triplets have become best friends after being separated at birth.
Rikki Jump, 32, and her sisters, Julianne and Kendall Scavo, were born on June 7, 1991 — but they didn’t all meet in person for another 11 years.
Their mother, Kathleen, 67, was excited to be pregnant but quickly became overwhelmed when she learned she would give birth to triplets.
Kathleen, who is deaf and was a postal worker, and her husband Lee, a truck driver at the time, knew they couldn’t raise three children in a financially stable home where they lived in Lupton, Colorado, and made a tough decision.
The expectant mother decided to put Julianne and Kendall up for adoption because they were facing the same direction in her womb and believed they needed to stay together.
Rikki grew up knowing that she was a triplet, but Julianne and Kendall were unaware until they were in elementary school.
“We lived around 40 miles away from them,” Rikki recalled, adding that her siblings were adopted by a couple, Tina and Ken Scavo, in Fort Collins, Colorado. “At one point when we were around 8, we went shopping near where they lived. A little girl came up to me and thought I was Julianne — it was one of my sisters.”
“That is when we started writing back and forth.”
The girls quickly formed a friendship, exchanging letters and catching up on the missed years.
“We have a very strong bond and we established that in writing, so when we met we felt like we had known each other forever,” Rikki said.
“It was more meaningful for our parents, my mom Kathleen had always suffered from a lot of guilt and shame about what she had done. When she saw them with her parents she knew she had done the right thing,” Rikki added.
Rikki’s father passed away when she was 10, which prompted Kathleen to move them from Fort Lupton, Colorado, to Neosho, Missouri, to be closer to her parents.
But before she moved, the sisters finally got to meet at the mall, where they shopped, watched a movie and immediately felt their connection.
“It was so significant for me,” Rikki explained. “It was kind of anti-climactic for us — we had been writing to each other for so long, so when we met it was like seeing an old friend.”
Kendall remembered being “very nervous” because of the “unique situation.”
“But then when we saw each other in the mall, we all ran up and gave each other hugs, and it was like we had known each other forever,” she said. “We fell into step like we were best friends, and it just felt like a new, great, exciting addition to our lives and family.”
Julianne agreed.
“The first time I was reunited with Rikki, it felt like falling in step with a lifelong friend,” she said. “I had built up so much anxiety about the meeting for no reason — she felt at home. “
To add to their crazy story, after Lee passed, Kathleen confessed that the man who raised Rikki was not their biological father.
Lee had undergone a vasectomy before deciding to have children with Kathleen, so the couple decided to use a donor and do intrauterine insemination (IUI).
“At the time I would have told you it wasn’t a big deal,” Rikki shared.
“I was upset when my mom told me and went to my room to process, but it didn’t make a difference to me — my dad was my dad.
“But, looking back now, I can see why it was so meaningful to me,” Rikki added. “It was shocking, to be sure.”
As she got older, she continued to wonder about her biological father, so she went down a “rabbit hole” on Ancestry.com when she was 26 and connected with her father.
“I sent my dad an email introducing myself, and he responded by being kind and explaining who he was,” Rikki said. “He was surprised to hear from me but happy to chat. I made it clear that I wasn’t searching for anything from him.”
After a few emails back and forth, the man was convinced that Rikki wasn’t scamming him and eventually agreed to meet last April. Rikki and Julianna met with him in person, but Kendall didn’t feel ready.
“It wasn’t easy but from finding each other, it has become more apparent that you do choose your family, and your parents are the people who raise you,” Rikki said.
“Something really beautiful has come out of this situation,” she also revealed.
“I also find it really heartwarming how my mum was able to bless two people who had been trying for seven years to have a child,” in reference to the Scavos.