Elkhorn coach finds his roots in Colombia thanks to social media

Growing up in Auburn, Jon Holtz grew up on the local tennis courts because his dad ran the local city rec tennis program. For the past 14 years, he’s been head coach for the girls and boys tennis teams at Elkhorn HIgh School, in addition to teaching fourth grade. 

“I started playing tennis at about five years old,” he recalled. “I played in the summer city rec program that my dad ran. I started instructing younger players and continued on with the city rec program until I left for college. I went on to Wayne State and played intramural tennis all through college.”

Ever since he was 10-years old, Holtz had found out he was adopted and wondered about his birth parents who were from Colombia. Since it was a closed adoption, he ran into a lot of walls and eventually gave up the search. Around four years ago when he was at his parents house, he was looking at his birth certificate and noticed his birth mother’s name. He decided to look her up on Facebook, and sure enough, those walls started to come down. He found a woman who seemed to be the right age who resembled him. He and his father wrote her a message.

“We concocted a facebook message which pretty much said could you be my mother? I also made sure to let her know if she does not need to respond if she doesn't want to,” he said. “The next Tuesday when I was teaching in my classroom she responded. It was a very long message in Spanish so I had to translate it. I was a bit nervous so I waited until I got home. Her message pretty much said.... I can't believe you found me.”

Since he had a lot of questions, they chatted via messenger for about a month. That evolved into video chatting, which was difficult because of the language barrier. He and his family then planned a trip to Columbia in 2020, but because of COVID, it didn’t happen until the summer of 2022. He and his wife and adoptive parents made the trip out to his birthplace.