When Jimmy Lippert Thyden met his birth mother for the first time since he was snatched from her arms as a newborn, he held her and wept.

Wearing a crisp blue suit and carrying a bouquet of flowers, he approached Maria Angelica González outside her home in Valdivia, Chile, and said: "Hola, Mama."

González — who had spent the last 42 years believing her son had died in infancy — held her hands over her eyes and sobbed. Thyden immediately collapsed into her arms and told her, in Spanish, that he loves her so much.

"It's been incredible. I liken the feeling to, like, finding a puzzle piece after 42 years," Thyden told As It Happens guest host Katie Simpson. "It's amazing how instantly I can feel like I fit in — like I've been meant to be here all along."

The August 17 reunion was captured on film by Nos Buscamos, an organization that works to reunite Chileans who, like Thyden, were stolen from their parents as babies during the 1970s and '80s, and adopted out to international families under false pretences. 

Thyden, now a criminal defence attorney, was raised by adoptive parents in Virginia. But he was born in a hospital in the Chilean capital of Santiago.

Born prematurely, he was placed into an incubator, and his mother was sent home. When she came back for her baby, hospital officials told her that he had died. 

"When she asked for my body, so she could have the dignity of burying her son, they denied her that as well, telling her they had disposed of it," Thyden said.

Thyden's adoptive parents were also misled, he said. His adoption records indicate he has no living relatives, when in fact, he has a mother, four brothers, and a sister.

Tens of thousands of stolen children 

He and his family were victims of an adoption scheme carried out for decades in Chile during the reign of dictator Augusto Pinochet.

The scheme — first exposed in 2014 by the investigative news agency CIPER — saw babies taken from mostly low-income families, and adopted out to Americans and others, who paid hefty fees. 

"People who were on the receiving end of the [adoptions], they were led to believe everything was on the up and up, everything was legitimate. And they believed they were paying for things like medical fees for the mother or check-ups for the baby or postpartum care, etc.," Thyden said.

"In fact, everyone got that money except for the mothers. It was a very well-oiled machine that incorporated people within the government, people within the medical arena, within the faith community."

The exact number of victims is not known. U.S. advocacy group Connecting Roots estimates more than 20,000 children were stolen during Pinochet's presidency. Nos Buscamos, which includes reports of coercive adoptions as far back as the 1950s, pegs the total number at 50,000. 

"The real story was these kids were stolen from poor families, poor women that didn't know ... how to defend themselves," Constanza del Rio, Nos Buscamos founder and director, told The Associated Press.

The organization has orchestrated more than 450 reunions between adoptees and their birth families over the last nine years, del Rio said. 

Thyden first learned about it when his wife came across an article in USA Today about a California man who had been reunited with his Chilean family. 

He reached out Nos Buscamos. The organization partners with genealogy platform MyHeritage, which provides free at-home DNA testing kits for distribution to Chilean adoptees.

Thyden was hesitant at first.

"I'm a criminal defence attorney, so the idea of surrendering my DNA to anything was not something I was willing to do initially," he said.

But he and his wife had just lost two babies of their own, he said — twins.

"I just realized if there was a woman in this world that had suffered that anguish for nothing other than somebody else's greed, that I would be no better than the perpetrators if I denied her the truth, knowing that I lived."

Thyden's DNA test confirmed that he was 100 per cent Chilean and matched him to a first cousin who also used MyHeritage. That eventually led him to his mother's doorstep.

"It's a miracle from God," González, 69, told USA Today. "When I learned that he was alive, I couldn't believe it." 

Since that moment, Thyden, his wife, and their two daughters have been in Valdivia, getting to know his family. 

"We've had nothing but time. We sit and we talk and we eat and we share photos — photos of family moments that I missed out on. And I show them family moments and photos from my life as well," he said.

"We do things together. We went to the zoo. We walk through the neighbourhood. Something as simple as going to the corner market, a place that they frequent multiple times a day to get groceries, is an adventure for me because … this is a market I would have gone to."

His Virginian parents, he says, have also stood by his side.

"When I approached them with this, I [said], you know, 'I can do this without you. I can do this with you.' And … my mom said, 'What kind of mother would I be to deny you this?'" he said. "She's been incredibly supportive through all of this, despite also being a victim of this herself."

He introduced his two mothers — his mama and his mom — on a video call. 

"The first thing my mama said to my mom was, 'Thank you. Thank you for caring for him and for giving him a life of meaning,'" he said.

"She had every reason to be mad, to be resentful … and instead, she met the moment with grace. And so did my mom. My mom just thanked her, thanked her for the gift of a son that she was able to care for."

What's next?

Thyden is using his newfound spotlight to speak out for other families. He's calling for more support, from the Chilean government, and from the states where the adoptions took place, to make more of these reunions happen.

"There's no making this right. You can only make it better," he said. "The only way you do make this better is by meaningful reunion, and that needs to be available to everyone, regardless of resources."

He keeps thinking of the milestones he missed.

"There needs to be no more missed weddings, no more missed holidays," he said.

That's going to be his guiding principle going forward.

"I'm going to come back with the idea that I need to stay connected, that we need to prioritize getting back here," he said.

"We're going to take [my family's] recipes home with us and carry that forward … knowing that there are no more goodbyes, only see you later."