n adopted American woman with a rare hereditary disease is looking for information about her Bermuda born biological father that could help unlock the mystery of her illness.

There was a time when Tonya Love of Helena, Alabama thought she was losing her mind. She went to a doctor and discovered that she had a rare hereditary disease called Porphyria (AIP).

Porphyria is a group of different disorders caused by abnormalities in the production of heme, an important substance in the body. Symptoms of acute Porphyria include intermittent chest, abdomen, limb or back pain; muscle numbness, tingling, paralysis, or cramping; vomiting; constipation; and personality changes or mental disorders.

?It is a terrible disease to cope with even when you know you have it,? said Ms Love. ?I know before I was diagnosed I thought I was crazy. Insane! I even had myself evaluated. Finding out I was only intermittently distorted ... now I am able to cope with it better. Although I still have my bad days. I know I will pass through this period to have some better days. I just worry about the nerve damage that is irreparable with each episode.?

Ms Love is the only one out of three siblings to test positive for the genetic disorder. She and her siblings and their children would like to qualify for a DNA research study on Porphyria.

?The DNA tests are very complex and very costly,? said Ms Love. ?The research grants will allow families with prior history of the disease to participate in the study at no charge, just travelling expenses and so forth.?

The trouble is that Ms Love doesn?t know if her family has a prior history of the disorder because she and her siblings were adopted when she was five-years-old.

?The only way my family will ever know if they or our children and their children down the line carry the defect is to have DNA Testing,? she said. ?Thus we have to track our bloodline down to find those who show symptoms and test positive for AIP; or possibly have already been diagnosed. While this is possible it is not probable the symptoms are so mimicking of other illness most people and their doctors never figure it out.?

Ms Love was born to Geraldine Black, a Cherokee Indian, and Victor Verdeguel in 1961 in Tennessee. In 1967, her mother left Ms Love and her brother and sister with a friend over an extended period of time. When she returned to get them, they had been given up for adoption. Her mother tried hard to get them back, but failed.

Tonya?s birth certificate said that her father, Victor Verdeguel, was deceased. Growing up, she was told that her father was Italian, born in New York City and dead, all of which later turned out to be untrue.

?All I ever heard about my mother was she was beautiful, Cherokee and wild....in that order,? said Ms Love. ?Being five, I should have more memories than I do, I guess I suppressed a lot of them. There was no way my adopted parents could have hidden the fact that I was adopted; I knew too much.? She also has a memory of her father brushing her hair and telling her that he once took care of Oona O?Neill Chaplin, daughter of Eugene O?Neill who once lived in Bermuda.

?My adoptive mother tells me stories of how I use to ask about ?other? people, people that she didn?t know,? said Ms Love. ?She has also told me that I use to go off in tangent gibberish talk that she thought I was making up. Later my now ex-husband said I talked in a foreign language in my sleep, he said it was magical, but he had no ideal what I was saying, or what language it was, of course I wondered if he was making it up.?

She began to trace her family history through Internet websites such as www.ancestry.com and www.rootsweb.com .

?Beginning a search for my father in early 2002, we found he had only died in December, 2001 in Georgia,? she said.

?It was a sad day for my siblings and I. Once we had found his place of death, we began a journey of trying to locate his birth record. After not locating it in New York, we searched on the Ellis Island ship logs (www.ellisislandrecords.org) and noticed he came into the port of New York on September 15, 1915 with my grandmother Rose, (whom we never knew) from Hamilton, Bermuda. Even at finding that record we had no clue that our father was not born in the US.?

After trying without success to find his birth certificate in all American states, she eventually decided to try Bermuda. A telephone call to the Bermuda Registrar quickly revealed that her father was born in Pembroke, Bermuda on September 3, 1914.

His parents were Rose Steinberg, a Romanian and Francis Verdeguel, an Argentinean. Victor?s parents were not married, and Rose eventually took Victor back to the United States to live in New York City. Francis appears to have remained in Bermuda, at least for a couple of years.

?Victor lived in Atlanta, Georgia in the 1960s,? said Ms Love. ?He worked in the Imperial Hotel in Domino. He was in a nursing home from 1998 until his death. I know my father worked at beach resorts, he worked on ships and he liked golf.?

Verdeguel is not a common name, but when Ms Love telephoned the handful of other Verdeguel?s in the United States they denied any connection to her. Her father?s relationship with her mother, who she is also trying to find, is also a mystery.

Now Ms Love is asking for anyone in Bermuda with information to contact her.

?What we can?t find out is did Victor grow up in Hamilton,? said Ms Love. ?Did he attend school or church there? Are there any early pictures of him anywhere? Can we apply for and receive copies of them? Do we have family and or friends of our father or grandparents living there? We have searched our state?s local libraries and the vast Internet to no success and believe that maybe someone in Bermuda could help us.?

If you have any information about Ms Love?s family, please email: tonyaAIPaol.com .

or write to:

Tonya Love

1301 Amberley Woods Drive

Helena, Alabama 35080