REUNITED: MOM SEES DAUGHTER SHE GAME AWAY 37 YEARS AGO

Thirty-seven years ago, Martie Smith handed her 6-day-old daughter to an adoption attorney and feared she would never see the child again.

She was wrong.

This weekend, mother and daughter met each other for the first time since that 17-year-old girl gave up her baby for adoption.

Smith, who lives in Cape Girardeau, also found five grandchildren she didn't know she had.

Her daughter, Candy Baldacci, and the grandchildren came from Indiana to Cape Girardeau to celebrate the Easter holiday.

"We only just met, but it seems like we belong together," Smith said.

The new-found family comes at a time when both women are making new beginnings in their own lives.

"I was 17 and got pregnant," Smith said. "Her father was in the military. He was supposed to come home. He never showed."

In 1955, an unwed mother was a disgrace to a family, so Smith was "shipped off" to live with an aunt in Chicago. The aunt knew a family interested in adopting a baby.

Smith recalled: "She was born Aug. 22, 1954. I got to hold her in the car about an hour when we went to meet with an attorney. I signed the papers and that was the last I saw of her."

Soon after the adoption, Smith married another man, had three sons and later divorced. Through the years she often thought about her unknown daughter.

Baldacci was adopted by alcoholic parents. She left home at a young age, married, separated and has five children to raise: Michele, 15, Jimmy, 13, Sarah, 10, and twins Danny and Nicole, 9.

Smith said: "I tried to find her approximately seven years ago. The officials in Chicago told me the files had been locked."

The family knew the baby's name was Candice, not much information to go on.

Smith's mother, Beulah Hunn of Indiana, also began a search through the Indiana Adoption Coalition. She hired an investigator to find her granddaughter.

"He found the files; we don't know how," Baldacci said. "One day a woman called from the Indiana Adoption Coalition and asked me a few questions. Then she said, `We have a match. Would you like to meet your family?'"

As a child, Baldacci had found her adoption papers. The papers said Baby Girl Smith. She thought the name was fictitious. "I was praying about it for years. I guess that's what all adoptees do.

"This is quite overwhelming," Baldacci said. "I went from having no one to having a huge family."

The call from her family came just as Baldacci and her five children were being evicted from their home.

"We were living in our car," she said. "This came at a time when we really needed someone. We won't be alone anymore."

Baldacci has a new job in Indiana, which she will start when she returns.

She met her grandmother and a host of relatives in Indiana earlier this month, but really wanted to know her mother.

Smith said: "This is really a blessing. I know God meant this to happen. Now I have a future and something to live for. But we missed out on a lot of years."

Baldacci said, "We still have a lot of time together."

Smith is currently not working. She is recovering from angina and surgery.

"I have to make a decision too. Eventually I might head back up that way too. I don't have any family here, just good friends. I have to decide."