She Was Left at the Hospital Because She Had No Legs. Her Childhood Idol Turned Out to Be Her Sister.

Jen Bricker was born October 1, 1987, without legs. Her biological parents left her at the hospital. Gerald and Sharon Bricker of Illinois adopted her and set one household rule: you do not say “I can’t.” She sat up when doctors said she would not. She tumbled. She won an Illinois state championship in power tumbling against athletes who had two legs. She reached the Junior Olympics. She worked at Disney World, flew as an aerialist, toured with Britney Spears, and later wrote and spoke for a living. The posters on her wall were of Dominique Moceanu, the 1996 Olympic gymnast who looked, uncannily, like her.

When Jen was about 16 she asked what her adoptive parents knew. The name on the papers was Moceanu. During those Olympics the family had already seen Dominique’s parents on television and made the connection. Jen wrote to her idol. It took years. They met in 2008. Dominique had not known a baby had been given up the day after her sixth birthday; their father had feared the medical bills. Jen’s first phone call included the line she had saved: by the way, I don’t have legs. They went public in 2012. Memoirs and documentaries followed, including Everything Is Possible and She Looks Like Me.

The twist is almost too neat for fiction: the child abandoned for a missing body part grows up competing in the sport of the sister who was kept, then finds out they share blood. What is not neat is the cost on both sides — a mother who never held the baby, a champion who learned the secret late, an adopted girl who had already built a life on a sentence her second parents taught her. The legs never arrived. The career did. So did the sister on the poster.

Sources

Wikipedia biography of Jennifer Bricker
BBC World Service: “My idol turned out to be my sister”
PEOPLE interviews and excerpts from Everything Is Possible
Dominique Moceanu’s memoir Off Balance