Chicago man discovers owner of his favorite bakery is his birth mother

A Chicago man learned that the owner of his favorite bakery is actually his birth mother – and is now running the business alongside her.

“I was on the phone talking to my friend when a call came through from the bakery. I was like, ‘Why is Give Me Some Sugah calling me?’” Vamarr Hunter, 50, told the Washington Post of the moment he got the fateful phone call in the spring of 2022 .

Hunter visited Give Me Some Sugah at least once a week, and he had the bakery’s number saved in his phone, he explained.

On the other end of the line was Lenore Lindsey, the bakery’s owner.

Neither she nor Hunter recall exactly what happened next, though Lindsey does remember opening with “Is this Vamarr Hunter?” 

At the time, she told the Washington Post, she did not recognize the name as one of her most loyal customers.

Hunter had been expecting a call from his birth mom, whom he was in the process of tracking down – and they two quickly put two and two together.

“When I knew who he was, we just started screaming on the phone. We were beside ourselves,” Lindsey recalled.

“It was crazy. It was just so unbelievable,” Hunter agreed.

Lindsey, now 67, was just 17 when she gave birth to Hunter in 1974.

“It was heartbreaking,” Lindsey said of the decision to place her baby for adoption.

“It was a difficult time for my family,” she added, recalling that she declined to hold or see Vamarr when he was born because it would have been harder to let him go.

“They wheeled him out, and I remember seeing a head full of hair and my mom telling me how beautiful he was,” she tearfully recalled.

Hunter, meanwhile, described his childhood as “rough,” though he did not go into the details.

He did not know he was adopted until he was 35, but he remembered feeling like he “didn’t belong” in his own home.

In March 2022, he saw a television show about genealogy, which inspired him to learn more about his adoption story and to track down his birth mother.

He got help from California-based genetic genealogist Gabriella Vargas, who tracked down Lindsey.

“He had a high match in his Ancestry matches, and it was easy to build the family tree and figure it out from there,” Vargas told the Washington Post.

Once Vargas put together that Lindsey was Hunter’s birth mom, she called and passed on his number.

“I said, ‘I’m not ready for this one,’” Lindsey remembered.

At the time, she was recovering from breast cancer surgery and preparing to undergo chemotherapy, she said.

Despite her trepidation, she called Hunter the same day, with a plan to offer to meet up with him once she was in better health.

Once she and Hunter realized that they already knew each other, however, the pair moved their reunion up to just one week later.

Lindsey said that Hunter’s laugh always reminded her of her brother’s – and now she knew why.

“We had an immediate connection. All the pieces had fallen into place,” Lindsey said of their bond, which was first covered by the Chicago Sun-Times.

Hunter immediately started calling Lindsey “mother” or “ma,” and started going with her to her chemo appointments.

“I started coming down to the bakery more,” he said. 

“I was always one of these kids that’s doing their own thing, and now it’s like I belong.”

“The whole story was insane. … She was already a mother figure to him,” Vargas chimed in.  “This needs to be a movie.”

Lindsey had a stroke in June 2022, shortly after she and Hunter reconnected.

While she recovered, Hunter started stepping in to help manage the bakery, even working night shifts to ensure everything was ready for the morning.

Lindsey – who opened Give Me Some Sugah in 2008 – did not want to close the bakery down.

In April this year, Hunter officially quit his job to start running the business full-time.

“I’m loving every minute of it,” he said. “It’s pretty therapeutic for me.”

Lindsey also has a daughter, Rachel, who is 40. She said Hunter immediately fit in with their family.

“He talks like he was raised in the house with us,” Lindsey said. “We’re both the same.”

“It’s like every part of my life had led me up to this point,” she added. “The fact that we found each other is amazing, a great joy, and I wouldn’t trade it for anything.”

“It’s a piece of me that was missing,” Hunter agreed. 

“It has changed us both tremendously.”