Last spring, with a little help from a devotee's Internet site, singer Joni Mitchell reunited with Kilauren Gibb, the daughter she had surrendered for adoption in 1965 and immortalized as "Little Green" in a haunting 1971 ballad.

"Joni told me that Kilauren's friends had encouraged her to check out my Web page," says San Franciscan Wally Breese, creator of the site that led to the reunion. "They'd said, 'Wouldn't it be funny if Joni Mitchell was your mother?' "

Though few birth kin searches get the kind of attention Mitchell's did, thousands of adoptees and birth parents are turning to the Net for answers that closed adoption records won't yield. Voluntary registries that post birth and adoption details, bulletin board-style message sites, e-mail support groups and search resource pages are proliferating, but experts advise caution.

"It's pretty common that people pose as professional searchers on the Web and bilk people out of thousands of dollars," warns Shea Grimm of Seattle, a reunited adoptee who runs a search-related Net site.

What's behind the phenomenon of searching for birth relatives on the Internet? What are its risks and advantages? What does someone contemplating an online search need to know?

"Prior to having the Internet, most people didn't know where to begin," says Julie Dennis, another reunited Seattle adoptee who's active in adoption law reform. "Now they can sit in their homes and safely type the word 'adoption' into a search engine, and link to all kinds of resources."

Dennis says the Internet also has spurred political activism, focused mainly on efforts to unseal adoption records and give adoptees access to original birth certificates.

According to Grimm, the number of searchers has dramatically increased in the last few years. She estimates that with the recent proliferation of Net access, 10 to 15 percent of America's 6 million adoptees are launching searches each year. Fewer birth parents undertake them, and women far outnumber men in both groups.

"Many birth parents were told by the agencies where they relinquished [their children] that they were not allowed to search, and so they haven't," says Grimm.

Joni Mitchell and her birth daughter both happened to be searching in 1996. Their 1997 reunion demonstrated the Net's potential for helping people find each other. "I believe I was led to create that site," says Breese, a Mitchell fan in his mid-forties whose role in the reunion gave him "one of the most marvelous feelings I've had in my life."

In 1995, facing a personal health crisis, Breese asked God for help, promising to do good works in return. He then launched the upbeat Joni Mitchell Home Page, which featured articles about her life and work. When the singer publicized her search for "Little Green," Breese began getting hopeful e-mail from adoptees, including Kilauren Gibb of Toronto. Her information was compatible with Mitchell's biography, and Breese passed it on to Mitchell's manager. Soon afterward, as the song had prophesied, Little Green had her happy ending.

The story struck a familiar chord with Carol Herman of Springfield. "I certainly listen to Joni Mitchell's songs in a very different frame today," says Herman, 55. Like Mitchell, Herman also relinquished a child. In 1996, a series of synchronous events -- beginning on the Internet -- helped her confront the secret she had guarded for three decades.

"One night I was on the Web, at a site about the Louvre Museum," she recalls. "Through a series of links I found myself on a page where a birth mother had done some paintings about her story. I was stunned."

The site triggered painful memories. She was a college student in her early twenties in 1965, when she became pregnant. The social climate was harsh. She gave birth without telling her immediate family, and surrendered her son for adoption.

"I hadn't spoken of it for 32 years," says Herman. "I hadn't even told my husband or children. But you never forget. There's no closure. I had always wanted to search, but had no idea there were these vast resources out there. I thought it was illegal."

The birth mother's page was a revelation. Through it, Herman found an America Online adoption registry where she posted the information she recalled. A friend around this time unexpectedly confided that she was an adoptee searching for her own birth mother. This coincidence compelled Herman to continue signing on to registries and adoption-related e-mail newsgroups. Through one group, she developed a supportive in-person friendship with a Fairfax birth mother and found a reputable professional searcher.

"If I hadn't been on the Internet, I wouldn't have known who to use," says Herman. Within 24 hours the searcher came up with a list of seven names, which was soon narrowed to one. At this point Herman shared the secret with her family. They were supportive of her quest. Herman authorized the professional to make contact with her son, whose adoptive mother had recently died.

"She said his reaction was total shock," says Herman. "When he called me, the first words out of his mouth were 'But I love my mother.' "

Since then, their relationship has slowly evolved. "There is nothing that is similar," Herman says. "There's no definition for that relationship."

The speed with which Herman's searcher found her son is an ironic pitfall of Web searching: occasional rapid-fire results. "The Internet sometimes makes searches so fast people aren't prepared," says Shea Grimm. "You need to do a lot of reading first about the more emotional aspects of search. You need to prepare yourself for all possible outcomes."

Joanne Small, an adoptee and psychotherapist who heads the Bethesda-based Adoptees in Search organization, advises that those considering searches join adoption-related support groups. Such groups can cushion potential blows -- including the possibility of rejection.

"My birth daughter wasn't happy to be found," says a birth mother who used the Net to find her daughter. "Never in my wildest dreams did I foresee this outcome."

Experts also stress the importance of collecting as many facts as possible from individuals and institutions involved in the relinquishment. "You have to do a lot of work," says adoptee Antonia Lauer, 28, of Clovis, N.M. Using clues from her adoptive parents and facts painstakingly gleaned from the adoption agency, she posted information on the Internet. A professional searcher noticed her posting and -- for no fee -- shared information that led to a reunion with her birth mother.

"I had this dream that I would be able to walk through the door and instantly feel at ease," recalls Lauer. "That instant connection wasn't there for me. But I found out everything I needed to know. After finding, it's like a door has been shut, and it's okay. Now I know."

Though experts say reputable professionals can help unearth hard-to-get facts, the Net also is a mecca for con artists and private investigators who cruise registries in search of business.

"You should never pay money up front," says Shea Grimm. "You can find a lot of searchers who will do things as volunteers." She also advises against putting too much personal information on the Net because it could open the door to impostors. "It's a case of 'buyer beware,' " says Earle Barnes, 64, a Northern Virginian active in the search movement. "Check references and go by a lot of word-of-mouth."

Grimm estimates that most searchers who use the Net will eventually succeed, but the highs and lows of the journey can be devastating.

Monique Parker Jones, 27, who now lives in New Hampshire but was born, adopted and reared in the District, offers glimpses of that tumultuous quest on her Web page, Monique's Web World.

"I don't know what to do next," she wrote last June. "I'm balancing conflicting emotions which don't make sense. I love my birth mother, though I've never met her. I get terribly angry at her for 'giving' me away. . . . I fear she has forgotten me. I fear I'll never find her."

Then, in October, she filed a court petition to open her adoption records to an authorized "intermediary" searcher. If the searcher found her birth mother, and the birth mother also wanted contact, the intermediary would arrange it. The petition went through, and her mother was located. A few weeks ago, Jones spoke to her for the first time.

"Just hearing her voice on the phone was really amazing to me," she says.

While she ultimately found her birth parent through officially sanctioned channels, she considers the Internet instrumental to her success. After suffering her share of e-mailed solicitations from "lawyers and wannabe lawyers who offered to charge $2,000 to petition the D.C. courts for me," Jones found a do-it-yourself D.C. petition template online. She now includes this on her own page.

Jones also discovered a morale-boosting community of other birth-kin searchers in cyberspace.

"I realized I wasn't alone in needing to search, and wanting to search."

Resources

Adoptees in Search. Send a self-addressed, stamped envelope to:
P.O. Box 41016
Bethesda, Md. 20014
or call 301-656-8555

Concerned United Birthparents
P.O. Box 15258
Chevy Chase, Md 20825
202-298-1011.

A Web site of particular interest to Washington-area searchers: Monique's Web World.

Other sites offering comprehensive search information include: All You Need to Know About Adoption; Shea's Search Series; The Resources for Adoptees Page.

Also, Sunflower Birthmom Support Page, a birth mothers' support group. On June 13, the group will march in Washington in support of open adoption records.