The Ruff family — Blake, his parents, the extended family — had been living with the mystery of who Lori really was for six years before the identification. They had known her for approximately seven years during the marriage, from 2003 or 2004 until her death in 2010. They had a granddaughter, their son’s daughter, whose biological grandmother on her mother’s side had not been known to any of them.
The McLean-Cassidy family — Kimberly’s mother Deanne, her brother Tom Cassidy, other relatives — had been living without knowledge of what had happened to Kimberly since 1986. For thirty years, they had not known whether she was alive or dead, where she had gone, whether she had been injured or harmed or simply unwilling to maintain contact. The answer they received in 2016 was that she had been alive for more than twenty years after leaving, that she had built a life and had a daughter, and that she had died in 2010.
The daughter born to Blake and Lori in September 2008 was eight years old at the time of the identification. She was old enough to be told, in age-appropriate terms, what the investigation had found. She now had a maternal grandmother, Deanne McLean, who was in her eighties. She had a great-uncle, Tom Cassidy. She had cousins on her mother’s birth family’s side.
Published accounts from the period following the announcement indicate that the two families — the Ruffs and the McLean-Cassidy family — began building a connection. The circumstances of how that connection has developed are private matters. What can be said is that the identification created the possibility of a relationship where none had existed before, and that the possibility was, according to what was publicly reported, one that both families were willing to explore.