Former beauty queen Elizabeth Hunterton, who was abandoned in an airport as a newborn in 1980, is set to finally meet her biological mother for the first time in two weeks.
Known as baby “Jane Doe” before her Miss Nevada days, she has been sharing her journey of tracing her roots on social media to enable her to learn about herself.
Though her pursuit of information about her roots led to the discovery of her father’s passing two decades ago, she had the opportunity of reuniting with her biological mother whom she is eagerly awaiting to meet in the coming days, according to the New York Post.
“I got a lot of feelings happening,” she said in one of her latest videos on TikTok, where she boasts more than 102,000 followers. “Probably the overarching one is fear.
“I’m freaking scared. Of what? Who knows,” she added.
Hunterton, now 44, was found abandoned at a Nevada airport gate at just 10 days old in January 1980, as she revealed to People Magazine in 2021. Despite being raised by a loving family in Reno and achieving success, including winning Miss Nevada in 2004 and serving as CEO of the organization, she has long felt a void due to her unknown origins.
“It all started with a connection on 23 and Me,” she said in a TikTok video. She made a breakthrough in her search for her biological father after she connected with her uncle through the ancestry website. She learned about what happened to her father 20 years ago.
Her uncle’s words, likening the situation to a movie plot, struck a chord with Hunterton. “My dear niece, this is the kind of thing you hear about in the movies but you never expect it to come to a theater near you.”
However, her fears materialized when she realized her uncle spoke of her father in the past tense, as he had passed away in 2004, never aware of her existence, a fact he had always hoped for.
“My birth mother never told my biological father about me,” Hunterdon said. “When he passed, he became one of my guardian angels,” she said. “I’m very much my biological father’s daughter; we look alike, we talk alike, and the first time I met my biological uncle, he just kept staring at me.”
Discovering her biological father’s identity was a swift process, but locating her biological mother proved to be a challenging journey for the beauty queen. Nearly losing hope despite assuming her mother had passed away, she received a breakthrough from a cousin who provided her mother’s contact details.
Hunterton decided to pen her a two-and-a-half-page handwritten note, anticipating a positive response. Hunterdon’s mother finally reached out, unveiling the mystery surrounding her past.
She learned that she was born to a black father and a Japanese mother who met at the Fort Ord military base, and she was born at a California hospital. She however discovered that her mother’s decision to abandon was not her fault.
“When I received her email, she shared that she wasn’t able to take care of me as she believed I deserved,” Hunterton told People. “Therefore, she gave me to her roommate who was supposed to take me to an adoption agency. When my birth mother was told that I was actually left at the airport instead, it took quite a toll.”
