From a Five-Minute Search to a National Story: How Jay Rosenzweig Built BirthParentFinder.com
Jay Rosenzweig never planned on building a business around finding birth families.
In fact, the idea that eventually became BirthParentFinder.com began with a member of his own family.
Rosenzweig’s niece, Maggie, was adopted. She knew her uncle was a private investigator and asked him if he could help locate her biological mother.
By then, Rosenzweig had been an investigator for more than two decades. He began his career in 1982 and by 1990 had founded J R Investigations, handling surveillance, background investigations, missing-person searches and other investigative work.
He developed a reputation within the profession as well. In 1995, the California Association of Licensed Investigators named him Investigator of the Year. He later served as CALI’s president and chairman of the board.
So when Maggie asked him to find her biological mother, Rosenzweig approached the search using skills he had been developing for years.
He found her in about five minutes.
What happened after those five minutes would eventually change the direction of his career.
Maggie’s search led to a successful family reunion. Afterward, she suggested something to her uncle: Why not use what he knew as an investigator to help other adopted people do what he had just done for her?
It was a simple idea, but it made sense.
Rosenzweig was already seeing requests from adoptees who had spent years wondering about their biological families. Some had tried searching themselves. Others had very little information and didn’t know where to begin.
In 2006, Rosenzweig turned the idea into BirthParentFinder.com.
Years later, Maggie’s story would come full circle when she appeared as a guest on Rosenzweig’s show, Finding Family DNA, and the two talked publicly about the search that helped start it all.
A Different Kind of Investigation
In the early years, BirthParentFinder.com relied almost entirely on traditional investigative methods.
This was before consumer DNA testing became commonplace and before most people had ever heard the term genetic genealogy.
Rosenzweig worked with what investigators had available: public records, proprietary databases, addresses, marriage and death records, interviews, relatives and the ability to keep following one piece of information until it led somewhere.
It didn’t take long for him to realize that adoption searches were different from many of the investigations he had handled earlier in his career.
Finding someone was only part of the case.
The person on the other end might be a mother who placed a child for adoption decades earlier and never expected to hear from that child again. It might be a father who never knew a child existed. Or it could be a brother or sister learning for the first time that they had another sibling.
Sometimes the reaction was immediate happiness.
Sometimes it wasn’t.
Rosenzweig learned that he couldn’t promise clients the reunion they hoped for. What he could do was find the person, verify the information and give the client an opportunity to know the truth.
When DNA Changed the Business
Consumer DNA testing eventually changed adoption searches in ways Rosenzweig couldn’t have imagined when he started BirthParentFinder.com.
An adoptee who didn’t know the name of a biological father—or perhaps either biological parent—could suddenly take a DNA test and potentially match with cousins or other relatives.
Those matches didn’t necessarily provide an immediate answer. Someone still had to determine how all of those people were related.
That created a new investigative specialty: genetic genealogy.
Rather than viewing DNA as a replacement for traditional investigation, Rosenzweig incorporated it into the company’s work.
In 2019, Linda Rasmussen joined BirthParentFinder.com as an investigative and sales consultant. Rasmussen brought considerable experience in the field, having previously worked with Troy Dunn, widely known as “The Locator,” helping people search for and reconnect with missing family members.
As DNA became an increasingly important part of adoption searches, BirthParentFinder.com expanded its genetic genealogy capabilities as well.
Today, an important part of that work is done alongside Misty Gillis, an experienced genetic genealogist who works on complex DNA and unknown-parentage cases. Gillis analyzes DNA matches, builds family trees and works through complicated family relationships to identify biological relatives.
Together, the team combines traditional investigation, family locating experience and genetic genealogy—different skills that often come together in the same case.
Cases that might once have been considered impossible can now sometimes be solved.
But DNA hasn’t eliminated the need for good investigative work.
A DNA match is evidence. It still has to be understood correctly.
National Attention During the Pandemic
One of the biggest turning points for BirthParentFinder.com came during one of the most uncertain periods in recent history.
COVID-19 forced people into isolation and, for many, created a new urgency about family. Adoptees who had thought about searching for years began wondering whether they wanted to continue waiting, particularly as they thought about aging biological parents and the possibility that the opportunity to find them might not always be there.
BirthParentFinder.com began seeing that firsthand.
Then the national media noticed.
The Washington Post featured Rosenzweig and BirthParentFinder.com in a story about adoptees searching for biological relatives during the pandemic. CBS national news also featured Rosenzweig in a story about locating birth parents during COVID.
The exposure introduced BirthParentFinder.com to people far beyond California.
For a company that had grown largely through investigative results, referrals and individual success stories, the national recognition became a major turning point.
BirthParentFinder.com was suddenly reaching adoptees and families across the country.
Rosenzweig considers that period one of the moments that took the company to the next level.
Five Years of “Finding Family” on KTLA
Rosenzweig’s television presence actually began years before the pandemic.
In 2014, he helped KTLA news anchor Chris Schauble locate his biological mother and other members of his biological family.
The story received national attention and went on to win a Golden Mike Award as well as recognition from the Los Angeles Press Club.
But Rosenzweig’s relationship with Schauble didn’t end with that story.
When Schauble became one of the hosts of KTLA 5’s Los Angeles program Off the Clock, Rosenzweig became a regular monthly guest.
For five years, Rosenzweig appeared with Schauble on a recurring segment appropriately called “Finding Family.”
Each month offered another opportunity to introduce viewers to adoption searches, DNA discoveries and the people behind them. BirthParentFinder.com clients sometimes appeared themselves, allowing viewers to hear directly from people who had spent years searching for family.
For Rosenzweig, those appearances became more than publicity for the company.
They allowed him to tell the public what this work actually looked like.
People saw the emotional side of adoption investigations—the uncertainty before a search, the discovery itself and what happened afterward.
And over time, viewers began contacting BirthParentFinder.com because they had seen those stories on KTLA.
Recognition From His Own Profession
While BirthParentFinder.com was becoming increasingly visible to the public, Rosenzweig continued to earn recognition within the investigative profession.
In 2021, the California Association of Licensed Investigators presented him with its Distinguished Achievement Award, CALI’s highest honor.
The award came 26 years after CALI named Rosenzweig Investigator of the Year in 1995, reflecting a career that included decades of investigative work, leadership within CALI—including serving as president and chairman of the board—and the creation of BirthParentFinder.com.
His work locating and reuniting biological relatives, along with his commitment to taking on selected pro bono cases, had also become an important part of his career.
The Next Step: Finding Family DNA
After years of telling family-search stories on television, Rosenzweig saw an opportunity to do something more with them.
In 2024, he launched Finding Family DNA.
The original co-host was Chris Schauble—the same man whose birth family Rosenzweig had helped locate a decade earlier.
The show gave them something a monthly television segment couldn’t: time.
Instead of condensing someone’s search into a few minutes, they could sit down with guests and talk about what happened before, during and after the investigation.
The show covered adoptees finding biological parents, siblings discovering each other, surprising DNA results and the emotional complications that sometimes follow a successful search.
Misty Gillis, initially appearing as the show’s genetic genealogy expert, eventually joined Rosenzweig as co-host.
And Finding Family DNA quickly received recognition of its own.
In its first year, the show won a 2024 Gold Davey Award for Podcast Series – Interview & Talk Show.
The award was particularly meaningful because the heart of the show wasn’t celebrity interviews or entertainment. It was the same thing that had driven BirthParentFinder.com for years: ordinary people with extraordinary family stories.
The podcast judge praised the way the show combined the emotional stories of adoption
with advances in DNA technology that can help people solve lifelong mysteries.
Since then, Finding Family DNA has continued to grow, bringing a larger audience to stories of adoption, DNA, genetic genealogy and family discovery while giving Rosenzweig and Gillis a platform to share both the investigations and the people behind them.
For Rosenzweig, the show represents another unexpected chapter in a career that began with traditional private investigation.
He had gone from finding people privately to helping them tell their stories publicly.
Giving Back Through the Work
Growth hasn’t meant that every BirthParentFinder.com case has become a paying case.
Rosenzweig has continued taking on selected pro bono searches for people who genuinely cannot afford professional investigative or genetic genealogy services.
Some have spent 40, 50 or 60 years wondering about their biological families.
Those cases have become an important part of the company’s work.
Finding Family DNA has also created a way for the audience to participate indirectly. Revenue generated through the show’s YouTube channel helps fund pro bono cases.
One person’s story can help pay for another person’s search.
For Rosenzweig, that has become one of the most satisfying parts of the connection between the company and the show.
What Four Decades of Investigating Teaches You
For someone interested in getting into this business, Rosenzweig’s career offers a lesson that has little to do with simply learning how to use a DNA database.
Access to information isn’t the same as knowing what to do with it.
A good investigator has to know how to verify information, recognize when the evidence doesn’t support a conclusion and be willing to tell a client when an answer isn’t there yet.
There is also a human side of the work that can’t be learned from an investigative database or genealogy course.
Calling someone and explaining that you may have located the child they placed for adoption decades ago isn’t an ordinary investigative phone call.
Neither is telling an adoptee that DNA has revealed something completely different from the story they grew up believing.
Rosenzweig has learned that solving the investigation and dealing with the consequences of solving it are two different things.
Both matter.
The Five Minutes That Changed Everything
None of this was part of the plan when Rosenzweig sat down to help his niece find her biological mother.
It was simply a favor for Maggie.
But after he found her biological mother in about five minutes, Maggie asked a question that would change the direction of his career:
Why not do this for other adoptees?
Nearly two decades after Rosenzweig created BirthParentFinder.com, that question is still at the heart of what he does.
Sometimes the direction of a career changes when you least expect it.
For Jay, it took about five minutes.
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