Adelaide man Jamie Fry reunited with his mum after being adopted from Vietnam in 1975

Jamie Fry last saw his mum before he was adopted from Vietnam in 1975. He spent years searching for her – and even after he was told she had died, he never gave up hope.

When Adelaide man Jamie Fry was told his birth mother had died, he refused to give up hope.

And just weeks ago, he gave her a hug for the first time since 1975.

Mr Fry, 51, spent 30 years searching for the woman he knew as “mum” after being adopted from an orphanage in Saigon, Vietnam, when he was just four years old.

He was one of thousands of babies and children evacuated at the end of the Vietnam War and sent to Australia, the US, France and Canada.

Mr Fry says he had an “average Australian” upbringing in Kingswood, attending Mitcham Primary and, later, Pembroke School – but he always knew something was different.

In his early 20s he started thinking about tracking down his birth family and set off on a quest of self-discovery that would span decades.

He travelled to Vietnam in 2000 and again in 2004, on his honeymoon with high school sweetheart, Nandini.

But, with Mr Fry’s birth certificate changed on arrival to Australia and no leads other than the name of his orphanage, all proved fruitless.

In 2010, a television station offered to help in Mr Fry’s search – but their efforts suggested the unthinkable. According to them, his mother was dead.

Adelaide man Jamie Fry (centre) was reunited with his birth family after 30 years of searching. Picture: Supplied

“At the time it was pretty shocking, but it just didn’t feel right to me. I refused to believe it and give up on looking for her,” Mr Fry told The Advertiser.

In a last-ditch effort, Mr Fry undertook DNA testing and found a match on his father’s side in the USA.

After visiting his cousins in Arkansas, Mr Fry became obsessed with checking whether any new DNA matches were found. It’s not common in Vietnam.

But at the start of 2020, just before Covid hit, Mr Fry’s wildest dreams came true.

“Two days before the (45th) anniversary of me being in Australia I had a half-brother DNA match and a note on Facebook from my sister,” Mr Fry said.

“We quickly had a video chat and then there was my birth mother and sister in front of me.

“It was numbing; it didn’t feel real. We were just kind of there staring at each other,”

“I didn’t know what to say, but it was very emotional after all that time. It happened really quickly.”

The emotional moment Mr Fry hugged his mum for the first time in almost 50 years. Picture: Supplied

Mr Fry soon learnt his mum Thu’s incredible story – she fled Vietnam with his younger sister, who was born two years after he left, through Cambodian killing fields.

“She was dragging my sister through dead bodies,” Mr Fry said.

They made it to Thailand and then to the US, where Mr Fry’s mother found a career as an award-winning chef with the Ritz-Carlton hotel group.

After two years of border closures, Mr Fry was finally reunited with his family earlier this year in an emotional moment documented by SBS’s Insight program.

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For the 51-year-old, nothing could compare with the feeling of that first hug from mum.

“Probably the best way to describe it is, when I saw Cathy Freeman at the 2000 Olympics and she came up to the finish line and won the gold, you saw on her face it was more relief after all the hard work and time, she’d finally got there,” Mr Fry said.

“I was reassuring her that I was OK, I was there and I was with her. I was trying to keep Mum centred.

“I was relieved that it had finally come true. I finally gave them that hug I’d wanted for all that time.”

Mr Fry hopes to return to America soon to introduce his wife and daughters to his birth family. Picture: Supplied

Being reunited with his family gave Mr Fry the chance to immerse himself in Vietnamese culture, which he felt he had missed out on in Australia.

“Just being able to recapture the person I lost before I came to Australia has been pretty good … and to get a glimpse of my culture,” Mr Fry said.

“The way they live, although they’re in America, there are still a lot of Asian traits – constantly cooking food and eating food, the pantry’s all Asian stuff. They’ve very much still held on to their culture.”

Mr Fry is now on the board of the Vietnamese adoptee-run non-profit Operation Reunite, which uses DNA testing to match adoptees with their Vietnamese families.

He hopes his journey will help others going through the difficult process of finding their biological families.

Mr Fry hopes to help other adopted children through the process of finding their birth families. Picture: Supplied

“Don’t give up but do your research. I do a lot of work with other inter-country adoptees and have helped a lot of other people find their birth parents,” Mr Fry said.

“You need to get emotionally prepared for any outcome. There’s no use doing this if you’re not mentally ready for it because it’s an emotional rollercoaster.”

Mr Fry hopes to return to the US as soon as he can, bringing his two daughters – aged 16 and 17 – and wife Nandini with him to meet his birth family.

“I came back with so many presents (for my daughters) I had to rearrange my luggage,” he said.

Mr Fry’s story will feature on Tuesday’s episode of Insight at 8:30pm on SBS.