Mother, Son Reunited After 50 Years

As Bob Barker tells his life story, his mother paces behind him, dabbing her eyes.

Occasionally, she'll reach down and pat his chest or touch his arm. When Jacqueline Barcia finally takes a seat, she pulls her chair close to Barker and holds his hand.

You'll have to forgive her for being clingy. They haven't seen each other in 50 years.

"Even though he's here, I keep thinking he's going to disappear," Barcia, 71, says as she reaches for another tissue.

Before last week, the last time Barcia saw her son he was a young tot still unsteady on his feet. His older brother was quickly approaching 3 years old.

It was 1958 in south Florida. Her husband packed up the boys to visit his mother in Greensboro, N.C. A month passed, then two. Barcia's calls went unanswered. Finally, her mother-in-law picked up.

Barcia was informed that her husband and the boys were dead. A drunk driver had hit them. And the line went dead.

"I went into shock," Barcia said.

She drove to North Carolina to view the graves. She was told that the bodies had been cremated, the remains scattered to the wind. Overcome with grief, Barcia joined a convent.

Meanwhile, Barker and his brother, Wayne, were with their father. Wayne was fiercely protective of his brother, even at a young age.

"He would take on the world for me," Barker, 51, said in an interview Monday at his mother's Spring Hill home.

Barker said that their father eventually left them with an old couple on a farm. But the couple couldn't care for them either, so they were turned over to state custody.

It was a mixed blessing for Barcia, who had decided after two years that a nun's life wasn't for her. The call from North Carolina family services confirmed her suspicions after eight years that Wayne and Barker were still alive. But the state didn't return the children to her.

The boys bounced from foster home to foster home until they turned 16 and 17 and were emancipated as adults. That meant they had to work to earn their keep. Work took precedence over school and they dropped out in the 11th grade.

Years passed. When he was around 35, Barker began having flashbacks. He couldn't identify the people in his recurring dream. A psychologist told him it was his mother.

Barcia hired one private investigator after another to find her children. They were no help. But as technology developed, she launched her search on the World Wide Web and that proved to be the key.

In December 2007, she received a message from reunion.com. It was dated from October. Her son Wayne had found her. Barcia called the number provided in the message. His wife answered. Barcia was too late - Wayne had died two weeks prior.

But what about his brother? Was he around? Wayne's wife didn't want to give out his number to this strange woman. But she promised to ask. With Wayne's wife acting as a go-between, Barcia eventually acquired her son's phone number.

Before she dialed, there was a moment of hesitation. After all these years, Barcia feared rejection. But her fears were ungrounded. That phone call in April went better than anticipated and it led to many long conversations over the next few months. But they still hadn't met face to face. Barker, a commercial trucker, was 600 miles away in North Carolina.

After months of waiting, Barker finally landed a shipment job in Florida. It would take him right past his mother's house. As he began to tell of the reunion Monday, Barcia began to cry in earnest. Barker began wiping at his eyes for the first time.

"Stop it Mom," he joked. "If you start, then I'm going to start."

When they finally met, Barcia threw her arms around her son and squeezed tight before planting kisses all over his face. He was home. Barker still glowed Monday at the memory.

"This is going to be the best Christmas ever," he said.