When she learned she and her brother had been adopted in Utah, she didn't have the words in English to tell her new parents she had three other siblings she missed terribly.

The children had been caught up in an adoption scandal that sent at least two people to prison in 1985 for defrauding adoptive parents and birth mothers in 40 states. While more than 30 Utah families adopted children after paying the defendants' fees, another 40 Utah families paid and never saw their promised children.

Though the adoption gave Bustillos a loving family, it also sent her on a decades-long search to reunite with her brothers and sisters.

Her journey came to an end this week as Bustillos, now Veronica Wetsel, met the last of her lost siblings. Emilia Zollinger, now of Atlanta, was just 2 years old when she left Mexico and had no memory of her brothers and sisters, but she too had been searching.

"I've been waiting for this to happen my whole life," she said Monday at their Orem reunion, laughing and teasing the two older sisters who share her same wide smile.

A lingering mystery: Wetsel and her brother Ed Jarvis were adopted together by a Utah family who hadn't known the pair had any siblings. As a girl, Wetsel made herself a vow.

"I promised I would find them one day," said Wetsel, now 32.

At age 16, after the adoption fraud became public, she was able to locate brother Steven Florang, now 38, and sister Sarah Sorensen, now 30, who had been adopted together by another Utah family. But none of them knew where to find their baby sister.

Indictments in the case specifically mention Emilia. Prosecutors alleged Dolores Bustillos, the mother of Veronica Wetsel and her siblings, never consented to Emilia's adoption, and instead was told both she and the girl would be sent to an American foster home for care and education.

Wetsel kept searching. She eventually moved to Washington state, still chasing the image of a chubby-cheeked toddler that was beginning to fade in her mind's eye.

When her first daughter was born, Wetsel named her Emme in honor of her missing sister. She told her daughter the story of her missing aunt.

Earlier this summer, Wetsel said, she began having dreams about her ancestors and had an overwhelming feeling that she needed to go to Utah. But she knew the trip wouldn't be to visit family members.

Instead, she spent her time doing genealogy research looking for her sister. It was an emotional search, with each promising lead dissolving.

"I was sobbing and asking God what is it, what do you want from me?" she said.

On a Friday just before she was to return to her home in Vancouver, British Columbia, she made a visit to the federal courthouse in Salt Lake City. There she was told the records she needed were so old they would be housed in Denver.

The news brought her to tears as she explained to the clerk she knew something was supposed to happen on this particular day. Feeling bad, the clerk checked anyway and came back stunned.

"You're not going to believe this," the clerk told her.

He had found the decades-old file.

The crucial clue: Wetsel was able to learn her baby sister had also been adopted in Utah, and got a last name: Zollinger.

She found a listing for one Zollinger, but was disappointed when the woman who answered told her there was no relation. Wetsel, calling from her home in Vancouver, was about to hang up when the woman asked if she wanted her to check the phone book for her.

When she did, Wetsel was lead to another number - the right one. The woman who had adopted Emilia said the long-sought baby sister was now living in Atlanta, and had been wondering about her, too.

Wetsel, Sorensen and Zollinger arranged to meet in Orem on Sunday. Sorensen, 30, said she was nervous about her youngest sister's reaction.

"I wondered, is she going to like us or warm up to us, because she's not going to remember us," she said.

When Zollinger walked through the door, everything fell into place.

"I felt comfortable right away," she said. "When they gave me a hug, it was love."

Introductions to children and family members would follow. The oldest sibling, Florang, was 11 when the brothers and sisters were split up.

His sisters say that although he was just a child who couldn't have controlled the situation, he shouldered the burden of their separation. Although he was unable to be there Monday, they said he was shocked and then happy when they told him the news that Zollinger had been found.

As Zollinger greeted her nieces and nephews with a hug for the first time Monday, she stroked her niece Emme's curly hair.

"I bet you've heard a lot about me," she told her.

Emme Wetsel sat on her aunt's lap, and smiled.

Utah's Adoption Registry

Adoption records are sealed in Utah and can only be opened by a judge. But the state's Bureau of Vital Statistics maintains a voluntary adoption registry that allows adoptees, birth mothers or blood relatives to pay a $25 fee to be listed.

If both parties of an adoption register and a match is made, the agency will contact both and set up a meeting.

The registry, which began in 1987, has matched 148 people: 64 adult adoptees, 55 birth parents, 21 sisters, and eight brothers.

For more information, visit http://historyresearch.utah.gov/guides/adopt.htm.