Brothers search for clues to past in streets of bustling Brazilian city.

Byline: From Register-Guard and news service reports

Charlie Prengaman was a baby when he was plucked from a Brazilian slum for adoption. He never knew his birth mother, can't speak Portuguese and doesn't remember a thing about Brazil.

But growing up in Eugene, he felt Brazil in his blood.

For one, there was his skill at soccer, the sports passion of many Brazilians. He's been a standout player at Churchill High School, where he won second team all-league honors last fall and helped lead the soccer team to the playoffs for the first time in 26 years.

``I definitely think it's genetic - like in basketball, you have this thing called court awareness,'' said Charlie, 18. ``I have the same thing on the soccer field; I know what's going on all around me all the time.''

He said he also sensed his Brazilian identity in the stares directed at him and his 17-year-old brother, Jamie, who also was adopted in Brazil, when they went out in public with their American mother. The two boys are dark-skinned, and their mother, Ann Marie Prengaman, is white with red hair.

A few weeks ago, Charlie and Jamie - both soccer-playing juniors at Churchill - returned to search for their roots in Recife, the city in northeastern Brazil where they were born. It was a strange but moving homecoming.

When news media heard the two were looking for their birth mothers, they were invited on a television show in Recife, a seaside city of 1.4 million people more than 1,000 miles northeast of Rio de Janeiro.

In the TV studio, Charlie and Jamie seemed to fit right in with the mostly teen-age audience. But since they don't speak Portuguese, they couldn't understand a word being said.

The studio audience was puzzled when Peter Prengaman, Ann Marie's natural son and an Associated Press reporter in Salem, took the microphone and said in Portuguese that he was their brother. Peter, 27, studied Portuguese at Stanford University to help investigate the origins of his adoptive brothers.

The TV appearance didn't produce any clues about the origins of Charlie and Jamie, and trips to the orphanage where the boys were adopted and the adoption court also provided no help. But Charlie said they took it in stride.

``It's like having a 100-piece puzzle and missing three pieces. I'm still missing two pieces - my mom and dad - but I found one piece by coming here,'' Charlie said, referring to his Brazilian roots.

The visit to the orphanage also gave Charlie and Jamie a taste of the hard poverty that afflicts about a third of Brazil's 175 million people and made both keenly aware of the good fortune that allowed them to escape.

Still, the trip awakened a sense of pride, and both said they'd like to return to Brazil someday.

``I feel safer here than in the States because we look like Brazilians,'' Charlie said.

``In the States, everyone thinks I'm a thug. Here it's bad to look like an American because everybody points at you. I'm so glad to have this skin color.''

The best thing about the trip, Jamie said, was ``seeing people who look like me.''

But the boys also noticed the subtle racism that permeates Brazilian society, although the problem is widely ignored or denied.

``If we go into a restaurant here, people will welcome mom and Peter and then look at us and ask what we want,'' Jamie said.

Race was an issue in the boys' adoption.

``When I came to adopt them, they said maybe you want to look at others because there might be discrimination in the U.S.,'' Ann Marie said about the orphanage.

She said she was surprised to be asked similar questions by the tall, white, English-speaking juvenile court judge who oversaw the adoption in 1986.

``I told him that in fact the U.S. had become much, much better,'' she said.

``They are inheriting a world that is much better than when I grew up in Pittsburgh, when I never saw a black businessman, a black doctor. That's all changed.''

A longtime English and writing teacher at Lane Community College, Ann Marie said she decided to adopt after kidney problems associated with Peter's birth meant she wouldn't be able to bear more children.

She first adopted a 7-year-old boy from India, Nathan, who is two years older than Peter. Now 29 and married, Nathan Prengaman still lives in Eugene and works for UPS.

Thrilled by the experience, Ann Marie went back to the McMinnville-based adoption agency that helped her find Nathan and said she wanted to adopt again.

"They said, `We only have babies' and I said, `I'm too old for babies!' ' recalled Ann Marie, a single parent. But she then learned that she could adopt two unrelated babies at once from Brazil.

"They said it's a good idea to adopt two - it's a difficult first year but then they have each other," she said. "And that's proved to be true."

Charlie was 18 months and Jamie 7 months when she adopted them, she said. The two brothers are not biologically related; Charlie is part Amazon Indian while Jamie is strictly Afro-Brazilian, she said.

The city of Recife, she said, is very different today from what she found when she first visited in 1985 to explore the idea of adoption.

``Recife is much more prosperous and built up, which is great for Brazilians,'' she said. ``But I felt a minor note of sadness in that Jamie and Charlie couldn't see the city that led their parents to give them up.''

CAPTION(S):

Charlie (right) and Jamie Prengaman check out the coconuts in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in January. They were visiting the country of their birth. Please turn to ADOPTION, Page B3 Adoption: Even TV appearance brings no breaks in identity quest Continued from Page B1 **ADVANCE FOR MONDAY, MARCH 31** Charlie, right, and Jaime Prengaman check out coconuts on sale at Copacabana Avenue in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Jan. 16 2003. Both are Brazilians that were adopted by an American family when they were babies but they decided to visit Brazil in search of their roots. They now live in Eugene, Oregon. (AP Photo/Renzo Gostoli)