Sports
Studio City Olympic Star's Sister Born Without Legs Given Up for Adoption
The secret sister of Olympic star Dominique Moceanu, given up for adoption because she had no legs, grew up as a gymnast unaware of who her famous sibling was.
Olympic star gymnast and Studio City resident Dominique Moceanu said she first felt "rage" when discovering that her legless sister was given up for adoption.
Taken in by an adoptive family in Oblong, Illinois, Jen Bricker won state titles, competed in the Junior Olympics and her idol when she was growing up was the sister she never knew she had. Now a professional aerial gymnast living in Studio City, California, Jen, 24, has enjoyed a close relationship with her sister since meeting her for the first time over four years ago.
“I was kinda in shock, who does this happen to?” said Jen on ABC’s 20/20. “Whose childhood idol turns into their biological sister?"
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Brought up by Sharon and Gerald Bricker in the small Illinois town of Oblong, Jen Bricker excelled as a youngster at volleyball, basketball, gymnastics and softball. However, it was during the 1996 Atlanta Olympics that Jen began to watch her idol avidly. Her parents then realised to their shock who their adopted daughter’s sister was.
“When they said her last name, it was like ‘Whoa, that is the same last name’,” said Sharon Bricker, who knew only Moceanu as the name of her adopted child. “And then they panned out to show the parents in the audience that showed the mother and the father and I realised that they were her parents and Dominique was her sister.”
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They decided to keep the information secret from Jen for another eight years until her 16th birthday, and she did not come forward to her sister until four years after that. “Hi Dominique, my name is Jennifer Bricker, you have been my idol my whole life and you turned out to be my sister,” she wrote in a letter to Dominique two weeks before the famous athlete was due to give birth in late 2006. “I realise this might be a lot for you to take in right now. Oh, by the way, I have no legs.”
“It was the biggest bombshell of my life,” says Dominique, 30. “Rage was my first emotion, had my life been a lie? I had this sister who was given up for adoption, and I never knew it.”
Read excerpts of her book in The New York Daily News, here.
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