Olympics Day 8: Help Find Toby Dawson's Parents!

February 17, 2006

Toby Dawson is also a South Korean orphan who was adopted at age 3 by a couple from Vail, Colorado (his adopted mother Deborah was in the stands frenetically waving a banner and cheering). According to the LA Times, there are conflicting stories on how he became an orphan (one story says he was left on the street, another outside a police station).

Dawson hopes to use the publicity from the Olympics to aid his search for his birth parents, which shouldn't be hard since South Korean newspapers have glommed onto him. NBCOlympics.com has posted pictures from his early childhood, and several people have already stepped forward claiming to be his birth parents.

This blog post was written by Amy Lam, a Hyphen contributing designer.

Contributor: 

Melissa Hung

Founding Editor

Melissa Hung is the founding editor of Hyphen. She was the editor in chief for the magazine's first five years and went on to serve in many other leadership roles on the staff and board for more than a decade. She is a writer and freelance journalist. Her essays and reported stories have appeared in NPR, Vogue, Pacific Standard, Longreads, and Catapult, among others. She grew up in Texas, the eldest child of immigrants. Find her on Twitter and Instagram.

Comments

Comments

Yahoo! Sports has report that Kim Jae-su of South Korea says that Toby Dawson looks like his son who went missing in 1981 in Pusan. Then again several other people have also claimed to be his parents, so who knows.