Life
Next-door neighbors treat each other coldly unaware they’re long-lost sisters
The two women wouldn't talk even though they both shared a driveway. But everything changed once they discovered the truth.
Patricia Lynn
08.19.22

There are some stories that are so amazing, they seem like they could only come out of a movie. But what happened between two neighbors was not only very real – it’s almost like fate played a hand in it all.

A woman named Hillary Harris lived with her husband and daughter in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. However, she was thinking of moving. Not because she didn’t like the house or the neighborhood, but because of the house next door.

YouTube - Inside Edition
Source:
YouTube - Inside Edition

First of all, she hated that her family had to share the driveway with the neighbors, while she also disliked the fact that tenants came and went to that house all the time.

And when a couple in their 50s moved next door, it wasn’t any different. Hillary felt that she had had enough, so she didn’t even try to be warm towards them.

YouTube - Inside Edition
Source:
YouTube - Inside Edition

“Here we go again,” she thought. “Now what?”

As she admitted, she was “turned off” by the woman next door and that they were cold to each other.

“She would not acknowledge me whatsoever,” Dawn Johnson, the new neighbor told Inside Edition. “I would come get my mail, shut it, watch her walk into the house.”

But everything was about to change in an unbelievable way.

YouTube - Inside Edition
Source:
YouTube - Inside Edition

Hillary knew she had been adopted when she was an infant, as well as she knew she had several half-siblings. In fact, she had already managed to reunite with three of them through Facebook.

But there was still one half-sibling that she couldn’t track down. All she knew was that her name was Dawn Johnson.

“I’d found three other half-siblings on Facebook, but I was having no luck with Dawn,” Harris told People. “I was beginning to think that I’d never find her.”

Unsplash - Kaitlyn Baker
Source:
Unsplash - Kaitlyn Baker

When she realized her new neighbor’s name was Dawn, she kind of had this gut feeling that she just might be her sister.

“I learned that the woman’s first name was Dawn, her partner’s name was Kurt Casperson and that she was from Greenwood — the same town where Dawn Johnson had lived according to the obituary I’d found for my father, Wayne Clouse,” she said. “I told my husband, ‘Her name is Dawn — what if she’s my sister?’ and we both laughed and said, ‘No way.’ No way could that be.”

YouTube - Inside Edition
Source:
YouTube - Inside Edition

And, although she laughed the thought off with her husband, she couldn’t help thinking about it. But she couldn’t find the courage to go over to the neighbor’s house and ask what her maiden name was or who her birth father was.

Until one day, Hillary ended up seeing the woman’s last name on one of their deliveries. Amazingly, it was Johnson!

YouTube - Inside Edition
Source:
YouTube - Inside Edition

Hillary got excited, and she immediately called her husband to let him know she had just found her sister.

Harris knew she had to ask the woman straightforward, but she was worried about rejection. So, when Johnson went out of town, Hillary texted her asking about her father’s name. Indeed, it was Wayne Clouse.

YouTube - Inside Edition
Source:
YouTube - Inside Edition

The two women spent that night talking on the phone and crying.

Neither of them could believe that after so many years they found each other just by chance.

The two women have been inseparable since they found out they are sisters. They advise anyone who is looking for their birth family to just knock on the neighbors’ door – you never know.

YouTube - Inside Edition
Source:
YouTube - Inside Edition

It goes to show that you should always be kind and respectful to your neighbors. Who knows, they could end up being a long-lost relative…

Watch the video below to learn more about this unbelievable story!

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