A mother who gave up her baby for adoption thousands of miles away has been reunited with the daughter she longed to see for 35 years.

Laura Ann Schnick made an emotional trip from America to visit her mum, 54-year-old Kay Carrol, of Greengates, Brad-ford.

And the scenes of jubilation at Manchester airport have continued at the family home, where Laury (as she likes to be called) has met her sister and three-half sisters for the first time, too.

Detective work led Laury - who works as an insurance investigator - to her biological mother, and a telephone call out of the blue from the United States five weeks ago was what an amazed Kay had always longed to hear. Kay said: "I got a phone call at 7.45am and a voice said: 'Hi there, I think you know me. November 17, 1964, Nicola. I think you're my mother.' I screamed and threw the phone."

At age 19 Kay went to New Jersey to be a nanny, discovering she was pregnant while she was there. As an unmarried teenager in the '60s, there was little support available and she gave the baby, whom she had named Nicola, for adoption when she was five days old. Her employer, Dr Livingstone, a gynaecologist, delivered the child.

On Kay's return to Bradford, she married Laury's father and had another daughter Justine, now 32. They divorced and she remarried, going on to have another three daughters, Leigh, 30, Gemma, 29, and 28-year-old Shelley.

"I don't think you ever, ever get over having a baby adopted. I've had another four daughters and now this is the missing link, the final piece. She's never been a secret. We talked about her at her birthday and at Christmas.

"I was worried she wouldn't like me. We have to build a relationship but we've become friends. She's my daughter but she's a complete stranger. I knew her the instant I saw her, it's that smile."

Kay, who works at the Champion House Cheshire Home in Calverley, has planned a huge garden party at her home tomorrow where all the members of the extended family will get to know one another. And she jokes that she has already had to buy new things for her American guests, a proper coffee machine and sparkling water!

Laury looked through birth registers and telephone books of the early 1960s and also applied for her real mother's medical records. It eventually led her to Kay's former employer and from there her mother "I became an investigator so I could learn the skills to find my mother," she said. "I wanted to know who I looked like."

Laws in New York mean medical records are sealed and it is hard to trace birth mothers, so Laury now hopes to campaign to change the law to make it easier for adopted children.

Kay's partner Bob Punton, 47, said the whole house in Redcar Road was in a state of pandemonium and this was a happy and thrilling time for the family.

Laury was accompanied on her voyage from New York by her 32-year-old adoptive sister, Joni, who said she was excited to see the reunion and on their return to America, the pair planned to trace Joni's real parents.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.