BOISE — If you think of life as a puzzle, thousands of pieces thrown on the table waiting to be put together, Ben Tveidt's puzzle only had a couple of pieces.
They were pieces that didn't quite make sense or fit together, especially for an 11-year-old who just found out from his parents that he was adopted.
"I thought my mom and dad were mine and that was how the world worked," said Tveidt.
For more than half his life, he didn't know who his biological parents were. Tveidt says his adoptive father was the first person to tell him about his past.
"I was like 'You're joking right?' and he's like 'No I'm not joking, I'm being sincere,'" said Tveidt. "That turned my world upside down."
Ben's life started in a box at an intersection in Anchorage, Alaska next to a Salvation Army donation drop-off.
"There was an anonymous phone call to the Anchorage Sheriff's Department," said Tveidt. "That call was 'there's a child at such and such location and somebody needs to go respond to the scene.'"
The only picture or trace of his mother who left him in that box was a police sketch in the newspaper.
Tveidt spent the first five or six months of his life in foster care, then he was adopted by the only parents he's ever known.
Two years ago, Tveidt's DNA search began.
"My first question was 'Who are they?'" said Tveidt. "I wanted to know everything about them."
After some time, things started to come together.
"We found a biological father and two half-brothers," Tveidt said.
Tveidt learned that his father's and brother's DNA was in the database because his father was adopted as well and was actually searching for his own parents.
Sometime later, he finally sat face to face with his biological father in California.
"He said 'you must be Ben,'" said Tveidt. "It was like being an astronomer and discovering alien life on another planet. The eyes, the hairline and the facial structure, it was amazing to finally look at somebody that mirrored me."
He found other similarities too.
"His entire house is full of books, full of antiques, full of memories," Tveidt said. "He's got a different theme, mine is mostly science fiction."
He also found out how his parents met.
"He met my mom at a bar in Anchorage on the same road I was actually found on," Tveidt said. "Birds and the bees and nature and the whole nine yards, I come along nine months later. He didn't even know I existed."
On this journey, Tveidt went to Alaska. He saw the bar that his parents met and that same intersection where he was left.
"Those locations were part of my life, part of my reason of being here," Tveidt said. "So even though they're unassuming and insignificant they're significant to me, and finally being able to stand on that soil it brought some closure too."
He also met his foster mother from all those years ago.
"It was amazing to go into the house and look at these stairs I crawled up and this carpet that I rolled around in," Tveidt said.
Once his story started floating around on TV and online, he also made another connection. The teenager who found him inside the box and brought him to the hospital reached out.
"He said 'all my life I have always wondered what happened to you?'" Tveidt said. "I think this experience brought some kind of closure to him."
As Tveidt and his biological father continued to build a relationship making up for the last few decades, the reunion came to a stop when it came to his mother.
"She was not happy to hear from me," said Tveidt.
He felt the rejection and a sense of deja vu.
"I'd gone through this as a newborn child," said Tveidt. "I don't remember it but I already knew the narrative for several years. Going through the experience again through the eyes of an adult it gave me a lot of things to think about."
Although his mother doesn't want to meet him, he only has feelings of gratitude and most importantly, closure.
"This was the most significant event in my life," said Tveidt.
The journey isn't going to end here. Tveidt says his mom and a half-sister he also found who didn't want to meet, have an open invitation to meet if they ever have a change of heart.