When Andrea Penaherrera and Marielisa Romo strolled into a café in the southern Ecuadorian town of Milagros on a fatal day in March 2007, they had no idea their lives were about to alter forever.

Nonetheless, that fateful day began the unraveling of numerous puzzles surrounding their existence. For one thing, they found they were twin sisters for the first time.

They met by chance when they were fifteen, in what appears to be a movie storyline. Andrea remembered eating at a Milagros restaurant with her mother.

Their gazes flew across the room, where a striking teenage girl sat, just after they had settled into their chairs. The two were taken aback when they realized the stranger looked Andrea in every way, including hair, eyes, and height.

Marielisa was the stranger’s name, and she was accompanied by her parents, Roberto and Isabel Garcia.

Immediately, the two girls started talking, vowing to figure out why they had such identical genotypes, which seemed too coincidental. They would subsequently discover they were not only born on the same day but also shared the same parents.

The story of the twin sisters who met by chance quickly went viral, gaining media attention. Several media outlets soon joined the girls in their quest to uncover the entire truth.

While the duo’s chance meeting was already mysterious, more investigation revealed that the story behind their separation was far more mysterious.

Various versions of the separation narrative have circulated over time, so much so that exactly happened all those decades ago is still a mystery.

Petita Penaherrera, the girls’ mother, said she had no idea she had twins because the doctors in charge of her delivery told her she only had one, Andrea.

Roberto Romo and Isabel Garcia, she alleged, stole the other child without her knowledge and reared her as their own. Petita’s version of events has since been refuted by Romo.

He claims that the mother was aware of both babies during birth. However, as a teen mother, she felt she couldn’t handle two babies on her own, so she chose to place one for adoption.

Despite the controversies surrounding their split, the girls were grateful that fate eventually brought them together. They were ecstatic to have each other as sisters, friends, and lifelong companions as they grew up.

The only thing standing between them and a lifetime together was their parents’ rivalry. Marielisa wanted to stay with her adopted family, but her biological mother had other ideas.

She and her husband, Augusto Friere, claimed custody of her long-lost daughter shortly after reconnecting with her.

Petita and her husband sued the doctors, stating that they had taken her from them. The adoptive parents, on the other hand, maintained their position, arguing that they gave the then-teenage mother multiple chances to reconsider abandoning one of her daughters.

Authorities initiated an investigation into the situation in the hopes of bringing the matter to a close and providing closure for both sets of parents who clearly loved their children. Meanwhile, Marielisa thought the legal dispute was pointless.

In an interview, the teen asked with her birth parents to drop the lawsuits and allow her to remain with her adopted parents, who had devoted their life to loving her for the past fifteen years.

That, she believed, was the only way they could demonstrate that they actually loved her as much as they stated.

Such heartbreaking tales make one wonder if separating siblings at birth in closed adoptions was justified by the good intentions of those involved.