Best friends who learned they're sisters find out they also have a brother: 'Didn't think it could get any crazier'
"Lukso ng dugo" is real. Two best friends who learned that they're sisters just found out that a childhood friend of one of them is their brother.
PEOPLE Magazine reported that Cassandra Madison, 36, and Julia Tinetti, 34, who met at work in 2013 and learned they're siblings years later, found that Thomas Buonaguirio, Madison's childhood friend, is their 31-year-old brother based on a DNA test.
“As soon as I saw him [Buonaguirio], I was like, 'Oh my God, that's me with a beard,’" Tinetti said, adding the situation "has been so crazy."
"This whole story has been wild. I didn't think it could get any crazier," she added.
Madison and Buonaguirio met in elementary and grew up in Connecticut, living 15 minutes apart from each other. They're adopted from the Dominican Republic, and the adoption agency that worked with Madison's family said they could be related.
“Nobody had proof that we were brother and sister,” Madison said. "Nobody had paperwork.”
Tinetti, who was also adopted from the Dominican Republic, befriended Madison at a restaurant they're working for. They joked about being "twins," but their adoption paperwork didn't match.
Later on, Madison met her biological father, Adriano Luna, in the Dominican Republic in March 2019. She jokingly told Luna about finding his son, pertaining to Buonaguirio (though still didn't officially know at the time). Luna denied placing a baby boy up for adoption but in 2021, Luna told Madison that he and his wife, Juliana, gave their daughter up for it.
Madison, trusting her intuition, asked Tinetti to take a DNA test. As for Buonaguirio, the question remained whether he's Madison's brother, though she ignored it.
"I didn't want this big mystery. I didn't want to bring it up," she said.
But some time later on, Madison's husband randomly asked her if she had spoken to Buonaguirio. They already lost contact, but Madison reached out to Buonaguirio on social media, asking if he'd be willing to take a DNA test.
"I was like, 'Let's just put this thing to rest,'" she said. Buonaguirio agreed, noting he was "intrigued."
It's still unclear how Buonaguirio was adopted from the Dominican Republic.
Juliana died in 2015, and Luna said he didn't know the boy existed.
Piecing together what they can, the siblings recalled that their birth parents separated for a time, then their mother moved out of town and gave birth to Buonaguirio. She then placed him for adoption under a different surname.
"We still don't have all the answers," Tinetti told PEOPLE.
Buonaguirio, who recently became a father, is looking to meet with Madison and Tinetti in November. They also plan to go to the Dominican Republic to meet their father and their seven siblings living there.
“It's great to know that I do have family out there,” Buonaguirio said.
For Madison, “I really do feel like everything happens the way that it's supposed to."
"This has been so crazy," Tinetti said. "This whole story has been wild. I didn't think it could get any crazier.”
