Men in the family beat the 1 in 48,627,125 birthday odds

From the e-mails and voice mails:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TIMES 3 -- What are the odds of a father, child and grandchild sharing the same birthday and all born naturally?

Try 1 in 48,627,125, said Jon Lindskoog of Denair, who had an engineer do the calculation.

Yet that's what happened in his family. Jon, 55, was born June 19, 1953. His son, Peter, was born June 19, 1984, in Modesto -- a week early, but naturally.

Peter now lives in Fort Benton, Mont., where he works in construction. His wife, Emily, gave birth to their second child, Rhett Jonathan Lindskoog, June 19, 2008, which was the baby boy's precise due date.

They had joked about Emily delivering by Caesarean section instead of naturally, so they all could share the date. It wasn't necessary.

"He nailed it," said Lindskoog, who was on a business trip to Florida that day.

He got a call from Peter, who told him, "Say 'Happy Birthday' to your son and grandson."

Certainly, over time there will be no excuse among the Lindskoogs for forgetting to send a birthday card. And who knows? They might not be done with June 19 just yet, though Jon admits, "I think the odds of getting No. 4 are way our of reach, but three is not bad."

Also, Jon, his parents John and Carrie, and several other family members soon will travel to Ecuador for a reunion with members of the Chachi tribe, who live in a rain forest on the west slope of the Andes. Jon was only 5 weeks old when the family moved to Ecuador on a mission with Wycliffe Bible Translators. They learned the unwritten Chachi language, then translated the Bible into that language. He spent most of his early life and parts of about 20 years living there and attended schools there as his parents did their work.

"We arrived in Ecuador 55 years ago yesterday (July 31)," said Jon, who no doubt is developing a penchant for remembering dates.

Lindskoog is the owner of Swenson Shear, a company in Ceres that manufactures cutting tools for metal roofing materials.

LOST AND FOUND -- A day or so after his birth in 1955, William Saaty of Delhi was adopted by a doctor and his wife in Torrance.

They soon moved to Dos Palos and raised him along with their two other children, one of whom also was adopted. When he was 20, they gave him some of his adoption papers. The documents included what the lawyer referred to as the "pink slip," giving them permanent legal rights as his parents.

A few years ago, he decided to look for his natural mother. It wasn't going to be easy.

"All I had to go on was this slip of paper from my bassinet (in the hospital maternity ward) that said, 'Baby Boy Inman,' " said Saaty, now 53. He continued to search the Internet, hoping to find something that would lead him to her. But, as often is the case, she happened to be looking for him as well. His birth family found him, also by searching the Internet, but his birth mom was afraid to call for fear he wouldn't want to hear from her after so long and might harbor ill feelings because she gave him up for adoption.

Recently, Saaty got a call from a woman in Phoenix. She began by asking his name, and then said, "You might be my brother."

"I thought someone was playing a joke on me," Saaty said. He asked her what his last name would have been had he not been adopted, and she had the right answer: Inman.

They talked for a while, and she gave him his birth mom's phone number where she now lives in Oregon.

"I was absolutely stunned," Saaty said. "I had to wait a couple of days before I called her. I was in shock."