NILES — By all accounts, Richard Collins, 74, of Niles, rarely smiles.

According to family and caregivers, though Collins, a man of few words, may offer a grin for a photo, the corners of his mouth never stay up ticked for long.

However, as Collins stood in the Niles Housing Commission garden next to his son Tuesday afternoon, a smile never left his face.

“This is emotional because he never smiles,” said Rashena Anderson, occupancy specialist at the Niles Housing Commission. “The smile on his face is amazing.”

The smiles came as Tuesday marked the first time Collins and his son had seen each other in nearly 40 years.

Collins, a resident of the Niles Housing Commission, was reunited with his long-lost son, Rich Welch, 40, of Dallas, Texas. After losing track of each other when Welch was an infant, the pair found each other after Welch took an Ancestry DNA test and matched as a first cousin with Melissa Rios, 52, of Dallas, Texas. Rios is the daughter of Collins’ sister, Terri Youmans, 70, of Thompsonville, Michigan.

“This feels great,” Collins said of being reunited with his son. “I’m very happy.”

Welch, formerly of Saint Charles, Michigan, was adopted by his maternal aunt when he was 10 months old after the state determined Collins and Welch’s mother, who died four years ago, to be unable to care for him. Though according to his family members, Collins worked hard to see Welch after his adoption, sometimes walking miles to do so, Collins lost track of his son after he was moved to an out of town facility.

Despite this, Collins never gave up the search for his son.

According to Anderson, in the three years she has worked at the housing commission, Collins has asked nearly every day about his son and asked the housing commission for its help in locating Welch.

Unfortunately, Anderson said, the staff did all they could but were unable to locate Welch with the resources they had. 

“From my very first week, he has talked about his boy and wanting to see his boy,” she said. “He would always tell us the story. … He was sad. He didn’t know where [his son] went or what happened to him. He would always say, ‘I want to find my boy. I want to find my boy.’”

After all of Collins’ years of searching, it was a coincidence that was able to bring him and Welch back together.

Welch said he took an Ancestry DNA kit on a whim, hoping to find out more about his heritage. It turned out his cousin, Rios, took a test around the same time, and they matched as first cousins. Rios began emailing Welch to figure how the two were related. Eventually, Rios sent Welch a picture Collins kept on his wall of Welch as a child — the same photo Welch’s adoptive mother had of him.

“I thought, ‘oh my God, I found him,’” Rios recalled. “It was crazy.”

“It was kind of shocking,” Welch added. “I didn’t expect to find anyone I was related to.”

That discussion opened a line of communication between the two, and last week, Rios and her mother, Youmans, brought a photo of Welch, now grown, to Collins. It was one of the few things that could plaster a smile onto Collins’ face.

“It took him a little while to realize that his little boy was the man in the picture,” Youmans said. “He would just look at Rich’s picture and smile. Even now, we got the photo framed, and he will just look at it, smiling.”

The communication between Welch and Rios eventually led to the planning of a reunion. Monday evening, Welch, Youmans and Rios met for the first time in the Saginaw, Michigan area, where Welch’s adoptive parents live. There, the three planned for Welch to meet Collins Tuesday — a reunion that was kept a surprise to Collins.

“If Rich didn’t show, we didn’t want [Collins] to be disappointed,” Youmans said of why the visit was kept a surprise. “Watching them reunite now, though, was good. It was very emotional.”

Collins said the reunion was one of the happiest moments he can remember.

Though Welch, a Marine, said he is not one to get emotional, he said he felt many things at once Tuesday after meeting his biological father for the first time. A father of a six-year-old son, Welch added that he could not imagine if something like what happened to Collins separated him from his son.

“It’s hard to explain, I guess,” he said. “It’s just kind of a lot.”

For the staff of the housing commission, Tuesday was emotional, with several staff members saying they are happy that Collins was able to achieve his dream of seeing his son once again.

“This is heartwarming, and it gives us hope,” Anderson said. “For people in a similar situation, it shows that there is hope, it can happen after so long.”

Less than an hour after meeting his father for the first time, Welch said he does not know exactly where he goes from here, but he knows for sure that he wants to introduce his young son to this grandfather.

“I’m going to come visit as much as I can when I come to Michigan,” he said.

With a laugh, Rios said that Welch is now a part of the family.

“You’re stuck with us now,” she said.