Woman hopes photo leads to long-lost family

A woman is trying to find her long-lost family, and the trail is leading back to San Diego.

Melissa Bishop, who currently lives in Florida, said she was born in El Cajon on October 13, 1966, to Bonnie Scates and Lloyd Conklin.

Bishop admits her mother wasn't always faithful to her husband, Robert Scates, who was often deployed in the Navy. She said she was adopted out to her birth mother's side of the family shortly after she was born.

The only thing she has from her biological father is a tattered photograph showing three young children with the words "Conklin kids" handwritten on the back.

"All I can really 100 percent count on is that picture that says 'Conklin kids,' and my dad's name was Lloyd and I was born in El Cajon in 1966," Bishop said.

She said the picture shows her three half-siblings, who she believes are named Danny, Denny, and Teresa. Bishop said she found out she had an aunt and uncle named Mayzie and Edger Hawthorne who lived in Chula Vista, and she believes Edger might have worked for a newspaper called The Sun.

Bishop said she started searching for them after surviving a battle with cancer she wasn't supposed to win.

"I had got Stage 3B cervical cancer and I had a real small chance of surviving, and I really didn't think I was going to survive that, but I did," Bishop said. "You know, the little things that, when I had cancer and thought I was going to die, that I thought, that I realized were important is the little things and I want to know what their little things are."

She said after she beat the cancer, she got into a horrible car accident that put her in a coma for a while and then took years to recover from.

Bishop has been sharing the post a couple of times a year, and now it is being shared around California. Bishop doesn't even know if her half-siblings know she exists.

"I would love for them to want to know who I am and that they have a sister," Bishop said. "I know what's important and that's family and people and little things, and I'm missing part of mine and I want to find it."

She knows it's a long shot, but is praying for the impossible.

"It would mean everything," Bishop said. "It would mean I have 49 years of little things to catch up on."