Imagine finding out your best friend for most of your life is actually your best friend? This is what happened to best friends Ashley Thomas and Latoya Wimberly, who met in middle school and had been best friends for 17 years.
The two Philadelphia-area women confirmed through a DNA test that they are biological sisters.
“I almost passed out,” Wimberly, 29, told “Good Morning America” about the moment she learned that her biological dad is also her best friend’s biological father. “Then I immediately called Ashley.”
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 68: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin talks about the recent backlash against Lebron James for not speaking up for Joshua Wong and the violent Hong Kong protestors.
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 68: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin talks about the recent backlash against Lebron James for not speaking up for Joshua Wong and the violent Hong Kong protestors.
But while Thomas, 31, said she too was happy she was shocked that her best friend’s dad, Kenneth Wimberly, is also her father.
“The first few nights I couldn’t go to sleep,” she said. “I’m happy that she’s my sister but had some emotions that this guy I’ve been around this whole time, I never knew he was my father.”
Thomas was raised by her mom and a man who she discovered at around age 15 was actually not her biological father. She never searched for her biological dad. And when her mom passed away nearly 11 years ago, she still had a lot of unanswered questions.
Then Thomas posted a photo of Wimberly on Facebook.
“I gave her a shout out on Facebook and my mom’s best friend said, ‘I didn’t know you were Kenneth’s daughter’s best friend,” said Thomas, referring. “I called [Latoya Wimberly] a few days later and told her my mom’s best friend said she knew your dad and your dad may know my mom.”
Latoya Wimberly and Thomas always felt they looked a lot alike and in fact had called each other “sisters” since meeting in middle school. Still, Latoya didn’t do anything of it until that fateful call. She pressed her dad for more information. He confessed to a brief fling with Thomas’ mom. That was when Latoya Wimberly asked her dad to get a DNA test.
“She told me she and Ashley would pay some and I would pay $100,” Kenneth Wimberly told “GMA.” “That was the best $100 I ever spent.”
“I am happy that she’s my daughter,” he said of Thomas. “And everyone is happy that she’s a part of the family.”
“Kenneth Wimberly, 48, said he and Thomas’s mom were teenagers when they met and had a short fling. They did not keep in touch, he said, and she never told him she was pregnant,” Good Morning America reported.
And as Thomas grew up, Kenneth often played a father-like role for her.
“If she called me with some car stuff or if she and Toya wanted to come over for dinner, they would come and hang out,” he said. “I asked her one time, ‘Where’s your dad? He won’t help you out with your car stuff?,’ and she said they didn’t have a good relationship and that was it.”
“As a father, I’ve always been there and I’ve always raised my children and this deprived Ashley of having me in her life to raise her,” Kenneth Wimberly said of Thomas, his now-oldest child. “I just feel so bad for her but we can’t undo what happened.”
“She always called me Big Kenny and now it’s moving from Big Kenny to dad and it takes a little while to get used to,” he said. “But she just looks at me when she does it and smiles.”
“I wouldn’t change it because I don’t know if we had known we were sisters, that we would have this bond and be as close as we are,” Latoya said. “I have questions but no regrets.”
The two sisters have five kids between them; Thomas has two sons.
“I’ll definitely be in their lives as a grandfather,” said Kenneth Wimberly. “We just try to move forward.”
