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A Very Special Father's Day

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RALEIGH — Michelle Muchanic traveled from New Jersey to Raleigh on this Father's Day weekend for a very special reunion.

Bob Carcopo fought back tears as he sat next to his daughter for the first time in 27 years. A divorce separated the family when Michelle was only 3 and she never stopped thinking about her father.

"Even though I was adopted, and I was raised by my mother's husband, it was still, well, that's not my real father, and it was always, I never let go of that."

"It was difficult to make a separation like that, but at the time it was the only thing I could do," Carcopo says. "It was rough."

Michelle found Bob's son, a brother she'd never met, through the internet.

"In the subject line it said, are you looking for a brother? Good, I'm available. And I cried," she recalled.

A few months later, Bob and Michelle arranged a reunion. Saturday night she stepped off a train from New Jersey and into his arms for the first time in 27 years.

She was one of the last people off the train and I said "Missy?", and she was in my arms," Carcopo said.

It has been an emotional week for Bob, whose own father died on Monday.

Today he sat next to his daughter, looking at pictures of the grandchildren he didn't know he had. On this Father's Day, Bob and Michelle are sharing memories more than a quarter century old, and vowing to make up for lost time.

Bob says he'd like to meet his grandchildren next.

And Michelle says her son looks a little like his grandfather.

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