Parents Meet Their Adopted Daughter 22 Years After Leaving Her With This Note

In the summer of 1996, Ken and Ruth Pohler of Hudsonville, Michigan were taken to the Suzhou orphanage in China where they met their adoptive daughter Kati for the very first time.

But a note left by the girl’s biological parents would come back to haunt them years later.

She Wasn’t the Only Adoptee From China

The United States is home to over 80,000 children who were adopted from China since official records started in 1999. 85 percent of these kids are female, but how did Kati Pohler from Michigan fit into this demographic?

China Forced Families to Abandon Girls

From 1979 until 2016, China enforced a child policy that forced many families to abandon their baby girls, or worse, so they could have a boy. Fortunately, that’s no longer the case, but for Pohler, that policy change came too late.

They Saw the Orphan and Fell in Love

China didn’t allow foreigners to adopt from their orphanages until 1992. But it was in the summer of 1996 that the Pohler family visited an orphanage in Suzhou and fell in love with a baby girl named Jingzhi. And soon, she ceased to exist.

Little Sis Had Two Big Brothers

The Pohlers were an evangelical Christian couple from Hudsonville, Michigan, with two biological sons. Soon those boys would end up with a little sister.

But the family wondered why anyone would have abandoned such a precious girl, and then they read the note.