These former co-workers turned out to be closer than colleagues.
When two Connecticut women met on the job, they immediately became friends, not realizing until years later that they were in fact sisters.
Julia Tinetti and Cassandra Madison, both of whom were adopted, first connected while working at a New Haven bar in 2013.
“We started hanging out. We would go out for drinks, for dinner. We started dressing alike,” Tinetti, 31, told “Good Morning America” of their instant friendship.
“I thought she was cool,” said Madison, 32. “We just kind of hit it off right away, It was very natural.”
After enough comments about their physical resemblance to each other, and the realization they each had a tattoo of the Dominican Republic’s flag on their thighs, the pair decided to compare adoption papers — but they didn’t match: According to the documents, the women were from different cities, and their mothers had different last names.
Then, in 2018, Madison’s adoptive mother gave her a 23andMe DNA test for Christmas, and she was eventually able to locate her biological father, who still lived in the Dominican Republic. On a trip to meet him and her birth siblings, Madison asked if he and her mother had given up any other babies besides herself for adoption.
He reluctantly admitted Madison wasn’t the only one of his nine children he’d put up for adoption: She and one of her sisters had been born during “a difficult time” for him and her mother.
Convinced Tinetti was the other baby, Madison had her take a DNA test.
On Jan. 28, Tinetti got her results, and it was confirmed: She and Madison were full biological sisters.
“It’s exciting,” Madison told “GMA” of the confirmation. “Especially since [Tinetti] and I were already friends.”
“This is the type of thing you see on TV,” said Tinetti. “People who were adopted are now reaching out to us, which is really special. That to me, [means] more than anything.”