NY Post Reporter Gary Buiso Boards the Paternity Truck

This is an accidental story about true fatherhood. The NY Post wanted to write about paternity testing. But in the process of finding a dad who wasn't, they found a father for the ages.

Gary Buiso from the NY Post boarded the Health Street DNA testing truck last month and rode along as we provided 5 paternity tests in Brooklyn, New York.

The Post featured stories about five of the families who experienced the process, and their reporters and photographers were on hand for the moment when they found out the results. It was intense, to say the least.

Amazingly, or perhaps not, we must have performed a hundred DNA tests during this period, but very few of the clients wished to speak to the press. And I find myself wondering, why is getting a paternity test still such a closeted issue? Why the stigma? In this day and age of science providing answers to so many of life's mysteries, why do people still hide the fact that they are seeking a biological explanation for something that haunts them so deeply?

Four out of five dads in the story turned out to be the "real" father. But, me and my daughter Sophie talked it over the other day, and we both felt that the most heartwarming of all the stories was about the man who turned out to have been not the "real" dad.

Anthony was in love with his girlfriend for years, although despite having unprotected sex many times, she never got pregnant. When she started seeing someone else, she soon got pregnant and had a child she named Ciara. Anthony assumed the child was not his, so he moved to Atlanta, but carried a picture of Ciara in his wallet for years. That was 25 years ago.

Fast forward to a wedding he attended a couple years back in Georgia. Someone approached Anthony and said, "Remember your old girlfriend? She's a missing person in Brooklyn."

All the old feelings came flooding back. He had 7 children of his own now, and around 20 or more grandkids. So he wasn't infertile after all - hardly! Maybe Ciara was his kid all along. He came to New York to help with the search for his old girlfriend. She disappeared when Ciara was just 18. In the two years Anthony has been helping Ciara, she started calling him dad. Her kids call him granddaddy. And then one day, she saw the Health Street "Who's Your Daddy" Truck and decided to give it a whirl.

Anthony flew in from outside Atlanta, and Ciara came in for the cheek swab. The NY Post was there when we read the results. He was not the father.

"Doesn't matter," said Anthony. "I'm going to adopt her."

"He's still my father," said Ciara. "This doesn't change anything."

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