A SEATTLE mother traveled more than 9,100 kilometers to Shanghai with the hope of finding her son’s biological parents before he goes blind.

    Molly Sano, who arrived in Shanghai two weeks ago, decided to make the journey after her 3-year-old son, Bennett, was diagnosed in December with Usher syndrome, a rare but incurable genetic disorder.

    Doctors in the United States say the illness will take away Bennett’s eyesight by the age of 20.

    “We just hope that he can see his biological parents with his own eyes, creating special visual memories of them before he loses his vision,” Sano said.

    Bennett, whose Chinese name was Long Miao, was abandoned in a Ningbo neighborhood in May 2012.

    “Hello, kind people! When you see this child, you will doubtlessly criticize the parents for being immoral. But we have no way out — please help us, we don’t know what to do,” a letter left with the boy by the parents said.

    The financial calamity that befell the family was to bear two sons, both of them deaf, according to the letter. Raising one son had taught the parents how hard it was to care for a disabled child.

    “We don’t own a house, or even a place to live. I thought I could make life gradually better by being diligent: but God has had no mercy on us,” the father wrote in May 2012. “In 2004 my wife gave birth to a boy, but when he was 2 years old we found he couldn’t hear or talk.”

    The family could not afford proper treatment so by the age of 9 the child was still mute. “This year we had another child, but God is so unfair, he has the same condition as my elder boy,” the father wrote. “We beg you to save this poor thing.”

    The letter was preserved in Bennett’s orphanage file. And last week fate conspired to deliver another remarkably joyful twist to the story when Bennett’s adoptive mother managed to find the father who wrote that letter.

    Sano, a Seattle sign language interpreter, appeared on local television in Ningbo, and news about Sano’s trek to Ningbo on behalf of Bennett reached the ears of Shi Boning, director of the Hearing Diagnosing and Screening Center of the Affiliated Hospital of Ningbo University.

    He searched the center’s records until he found a case similar to the boy’s and reached out to the child’s father, surprised to find the phone number in the case file was still active. Five days after Sano landed in Ningbo, the families embraced.

    “So many things had to go just right for this to happen,” Sano said. The doctor who diagnosed Bennett as a baby saw the TV report, the parents had not changed their own phone number and they resisted the urge to ignore a call from someone they didn’t know.

    Frightened that she might be in trouble, the mother at first denied who she was. But she quickly had second thoughts and called back. Within hours, this extraordinary extended family was united — and Bennett’s two mothers could hardly stop hugging and crying. Bennett’s biological mother, a migrant worker in her 30s, burst into tears and repeatedly said, “I really had no other choice.”

    Bennett’s Chinese parents were eager to tell the story of his birth and his family. Besides an older brother, who also is deaf, which was mentioned in a note left by Bennett’s side when he was found, he also has a sister and a younger brother born with normal hearing. Bennett was born on April 1, 2012. His parents expected him to take care of his older brother in the future, but their hopes drained away when they found out that he could not hear either.

    “We worked in a factory where the monthly payment was only about 1,000 yuan (US$152),” Bennett’s biological father said.

    On May 18, 2012, his parents made the decision to give him up and Bennett was placed at the south gate of a luxurious residential area. His father didn’t leave until he saw a security guard collect the boy and take him safely to the police station.

    Later transferred to the Enmei Child Welfare Association in Ningbo, Bennett remained there until Sano came for him and took him home to Seattle.

    With photos, Sano told the couple about the boy’s daily life in a family of four, where he attends school and is growing up like a normal child. The two mothers added each other on WeChat, a popular messaging app, and Sano offered to send photos of Bennett every year.

    They also have one touchy subject to tackle: the birth father’s letter makes clear that he abandoned the baby because a doctor told him the child needed a cochlear implant and the birth family could not afford one.

    But Sano and her husband, Chris — who is deaf — plan to let Bennett decide later if he wants an implant. They have taught him to sign. “To us, he is perfect,” says Ms. Sano. “This isn’t a sad story of a deaf boy who will lose his vision, it’s a joyful, powerful story of a boy who happened to land in a family and a location that are a perfect fit for him,” she says. “There is no limit to our dreams for our son.”

    Back in China, the birth family’s financial situation has improved; the father now has an iPhone 6s. But they think Bennett is lucky, too. “Now that we have seen your family, we can see that he has a better life there than here,” the birth mother told Sano.

    (SD-Agencies)