She 'always wanted to find' her family. It turns out her sister was living next door

Ever since she was adopted as a baby, Hillary Harris said, she has wondered about the biological family she never knew.

"I always wanted to find them," she told CBS News. "It was always in the back of my mind and I knew that eventually I would search when I was ready."

She probably never expected to find one of her relatives living next door — but that's what happened.

It started back in 2012, when Harris says she received adoption documents from Catholic Charities that revealed her biological parents were named "Bonnie Carl and Wayne Clouse." The documents revealed more nuggets of crucial information, she told ABC News.

"I also learned in that packet that my birth father Wayne had passed in 2010," she said. "They included his obituary. In his obituary is where I learned that my half-sister Dawn was from Greenwood, Wisconsin, and was the Loyal Corn Festival Queen in the 80s."

Then in 2017, a woman named Dawn Johnson moved right next door in Harris' neighborhood in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, according to ABC News.

Johnson, a 50-year-old who moved from Greenwood, and Harris, 31, had a rocky relationship at first.

"She would not acknowledge me whatsoever," Harris said in an interview with "Inside Edition." "She'd go into the house."

But Harris told CBS News that she suspected Dawn might be more than a reclusive neighbor. She and her husband, Lance, talked about meeting the new neighbor, she said, especially after learning that she used to live in Greenwood. But Lance didn't connect the dots.

"(Lance) comes in, and is like, 'Yeah, I met the neighbor. Her name's Dawn.'"

"Dawn from Greenwood?" Harris recalls responding.

"Lance is like, 'Yeah.' I'm like, 'You don't get it?' He's like, 'What are you talking about?'"

"I pulled out all my adoption paperwork," she told CBS. "And I said, 'Dawn. Greenwood. Sister. You know?'

"And he's like, 'Oh my gosh.'"

Months after she moved into the neighborhood, Johnson received texts on her cellphone from Harris, who began asking questions about her father, according to ABC News. That caused Johnson to suspect something, too.

"The questions are what led me to blurt out, 'You and me have the same dad don’t we?'" Johnson said.

It turns out they do. They both learned their father is Wayne Clouse, CBS reported, so half-sisters Harris and Johnson started their new relationship with a hug on their shared driveway.

The pair have also started to point out little things they have in common, like their chins, according to "Inside Edition."

Johnson — now the proud aunt of Harris' 5-year-old daughter, Stella — said the discovery has made life much better. The little girl and her aunt, whom she calls "Dawn-ald Duck," have daily Facetime dates, even though they are a quick walk away.

"This whole time since we found out has been so much fun," Johnson told WISN12. "We've been making memories."