While Dorothy Tribbett was searching for a daughter she had given up for adoption more than 40 years ago, she read that Illinois had a law revision making it easier to find adopted children.

She registered with the state as a parent seeking a child, something she was not permitted to do before Jan. 1, 2004, when the revised Adoption Act went into effect.

When she discovered the daughter she had given up had not registered, she contacted a confidential intermediary at the Midwest Adoption Agency, another service made available to her because of the change in the law.

The intermediary appointed to Tribbett's case, Mary Wilkins, began searching for her daughter.

"On Nov. 10, she called to say she found her," Tribbett recalled. "She said, 'Guess who I just talked to?' "

For Tribbett, this was the end of a long road that began when she gave up her first daughter for adoption in 1960. She gave up her younger daughter in 1962.

After two years of searching, Tribbett was reunited with her older daughter in 2003. It took longer to locate her younger daughter, Chris. She needed an intermediary to find her.

"Roseann tried to find me, but Chris didn't," Tribbett said.

When asked why she decided to look for her daughters after all those years, Tribbett said she wished she had never given either of them up.

"It would have been all right," she said. "I wished I would have started (searching) a long time before."

Tribbett paid $445 to Midwest Adoption Center of Des Plaines, a private nonprofit agency, to locate her younger daughter. That is a fraction of what some private agencies charge to locate adopted children.

Midwest Adoption Center is under exclusive contract to the state to operate the Confidential Intermediary Service, said Gretchen Schulert, the center's co-director. She said there are 17 intermediaries who serve the state.

Marilyn Strohkirch, an intermediary who lives in Bloomington, said she had a success rate of about 80 percent since she was certified in 1996. But before the law went into effect last year, she was exclusively helping adoptees find their birth parents. Prior to 2004, the Confidential Intermediary Service was only open to adoptees who had a medical reason for searching.

"Up until 2004, birth parents weren't allowed to do this," she said. "Since 2004, I've had at least four birth parents. I would probably have more, but birth parents don't know this is available."

Before someone is eligible to use the confidential intermediary program, he or she must register with the Illinois Adoption Registry. The registry may be contacted at 1-877-323-5299 (toll-free from Illinois only) or 782-6553.

Victoria Baird, supervisor of the adoption registry, said if both the birth parent and the child register, saying they are searching for each other, she then sends letters to both at the same time, giving each the other's information.

"The Confidential Intermediary Service would not come into it if you are both registered," she said. "When we don't make a match, they come into the picture. That is an additional search option if we are not able to make a match."

Tribbett said she appreciates the new law that enabled her to successfully conclude the search for her younger daughter.

"The reason I found her was because of this law," she said.

Huey Freeman can be reached at hfreeman@;herald-review.com or 421-6985.