For state Rep. David Livingston, getting an early January text message from a former lawmaker was not unusual.
But this was no normal message about state budgets or political chatter. The text was a “game changer,” Livingston, 59, said: It led to the discovery he has an adult daughter he never knew about.
Over the course of a dizzying first two weeks of 2024, the Peoria Republican wrapped his head around this news, courtesy of the popularity of DNA tests and the hunt for family connections.
Eight days after that text, Livingston was sitting in the Chandler home of his daughter, Shanda Payne, a married mother of two.
It was a meeting that neither of them had expected. Payne, 38, said she took a 23andMe DNA test in December out of curiosity. She wasn’t expecting anything that would change her life story.
Livingston was initially shocked at the news, which he confirmed with a paternity test of his own. “Oh my God, I’m turning 60 and I have another family I didn’t know,” he said.
He did some quick mental math. “That puts me in my freshman year at ASU, at a fraternity,” he said, having “relations.”