In 2019, Davida Ross Hu wanted to travel to England, so she applied for her first passport. The process did not go as expected — in fact, it reshaped her family history and triggered a move to another state.
“When I applied for the passport,” she recalled, “I got a response letter requesting 10 proofs of identification.”
She pulled together bank statements, insurance cards, school IDs, work IDs — rifling through old files and boxes, looking for anything that would help prove her identity. She gathered just enough to satisfy the request and, eventually, received her passport.
But the process of proving who she was to the passport agency sparked a change in the way Ms. Ross Hu understood her own identity.
And there were clues. She remembered that she had asked her mother why there were never any pictures of her as a baby, she said: “Whenever I had asked before, she had told me they burned in a fire.”
Ms. Ross Hu, who was 37 at the time, said her mother had never mentioned the subject of adoption. But when she considered the idea, it didn’t seem impossible. “It made sense, in a way,” she said. “Because growing up, I never really bonded with my mom.”
A few months later, her grandmother died. Ms. Ross Hu, who was living in Orlando, Fla., drove to Tampa to help with the funeral arrangements and the task of clearing out her grandmother’s house. She said she took the opportunity to ask her mother about the past while they cleared out family records and paperwork.
Her mother deflected her way through a few of those conversations, Ms. Ross Hu said, but soon stopped resisting and told the whole truth: Not only was Ms. Ross Hu adopted, but her two older brothers were, as well — each from different biological families. (Gloria Ross Hu, her adoptive mother, did not respond to three telephone messages left over two days requesting a comment for this article.)
After hearing the news, Ms. Ross Hu was determined to locate her biological family. “I knew I needed to find out who my birth family is,” she said.
$2,905 | Bayonne, N.J.
Davida Ross Hu, 41; Brii Kennedy, 32
Occupation: Ms. Ross Hu is a tech specialist for property management systems; Ms. Kennedy is an EKG technician.
On the package deliveries: One favorite building amenity is the package storage room. “You get a text message letting you know you have a package,” Ms. Kennedy said. “You’re sent a QR code that allows you in, and there’s a laser in the room that points directly at your box so you know which one is yours.”
On canine ancestry: During Covid, Ms. Ross Hu and Ms. Kennedy expanded their family by adopting a dog, Diva, rescued from the Virgin Islands following a hurricane. After experiencing the benefits of understanding her own ancestry, Ms. Ross Hu couldn’t resist registering to receive Diva’s genetic information, too. The results? Their dog is a lovable mix of mostly pit bull, terrier, mastiff and Shih Tzu.
One piece of information that her adoptive mother revealed was that she was born at Harlem Hospital Center. So Ms. Ross Hu applied to New York State in early 2020 to receive her birth certificate. (It was a stroke of good timing, because that year a new state law went into effect, giving adopted adults unrestricted access to such records.)
“It had my birth mother’s name,” she said. “But not my father.”
With that information, Ms. Ross Hu registered with an online genealogy website. She soon discovered her father’s identity through his family members, but she also discovered that he had died of a drug overdose three months earlier.
While she searched for her birth mother online, she connected with several other family members, including cousins and aunts, who told her that her mother also suffered from addiction and might have died of an overdose, but they could not be certain.
As she processed the news, she found herself talking more with members of her new family. Most were living on Long Island or New York City, where Ms. Ross Hu had lived until middle school.
In late 2022, as the holidays approached, she and her girlfriend, Brii Kennedy, took a flight from Orlando to visit her newly discovered family in New York. “I ended up really bonding with one of my cousins,” she said, “so we spent Christmas and New Year’s with her.”
The trip made an impact — and Ms. Ross Hu didn’t wait long to return, making a second visit the following May. It felt as if her new family and the city of her birth were inviting her back with open arms.
So she raised the possibility of moving to New York, and Ms. Kennedy didn’t balk. “I said, ‘Yeah, I’m ready to get out. Let’s try something different,’” Ms. Kennedy recalled.
On Aug. 28, 2023, the couple loaded a moving truck and drove to New York. They stayed with a cousin in Brooklyn, and within a few weeks Ms. Kennedy, an EKG technician, had found work and was already doing long shifts. Ms. Ross Hu, who works from home as a tech specialist, took on the task of finding an apartment.
She quickly learned how few options fit their budget — and how small the possibilities were. “We’re used to space,” she said. “Especially coming from Florida, where apartments are much more spacious. And we wanted amenities like a washer and dryer — we’re not trying to go to a laundromat to wash clothes.”
She suggested they broaden the search to New Jersey, but “I was so against it,” Ms. Kennedy confessed, laughing.
Still, she reluctantly agreed, and Ms. Ross Hu ventured across the Hudson River. It took only three tries to find an apartment that felt right. When she saw a one-bedroom at a building called Citizen Bayonne, near the river’s edge, she called her girlfriend to show her the place over video.
“Right away, I said, ‘I love it,’” Ms. Kennedy recalled. “The most important thing was to confirm if the bedroom could fit our king-size bed. When she showed me the bedroom, I said, ‘Oh yeah, it’ll fit — that’s the room, let’s do it.’”
They moved in a few weeks later, and the maintenance team impressed them immediately. “They respond freaky-fast. I mean, they’re Jimmy-Johns quick,” Ms. Kennedy said, referring to the chain of fast-food sandwich shops.
The couple are grateful to have access to a washer and dryer. They’re grateful for the gym in the building, and the food trucks outside every Wednesday. They’re grateful for the quiet city of Bayonne and the exuberant family just across the river.
And Ms. Ross Hu continues to discover more family members. Recently, she connected with another aunt. “I keep finding my people,” she said. “And it feels good.”