A former beauty queen who was abandoned in an airport as a newborn in 1980 will finally meet her biological mother for the first time in two weeks.
Elizabeth Hunterton, who long before she was crowned Miss Nevada was known only as baby “Jane Doe,” has been documenting the tedious journey of tracking down her biological parents on social media to learn more about herself.
While her research led her to learn the heartbreaking news her biological father died 20 years ago, she’s reconnected with family and is anxiously anticipating meeting her biological mother in just a matter of days.
“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, 44, was discovered at the gate of a Nevada airport by two pilots in January, 1980, when she was just 10 days old, she told People Magazine in 2021.
She was adopted and raised in Reno by a loving family and has led a fulfilling life — she was named Miss Nevada in 2004 and continues to work for the organization as CEO. But she said she’s also felt a hole in her life not knowing anything about her past.
“It all started with a connection on 23 and Me,” she said in a TikTok video.
She was first to find out what happened to her biological father after she was connected by his brother, her uncle, through the popular ancestry website.
She called him and said he told her “‘My dear niece, this is the kind of things you hear about in the movies but you never expect it to come to a theater near you.’” Hunterton agreed.
But one of her greatest fears came true when she realized her uncle had been speaking in the past tense about her father, whom he described as “an incredible man.” He died in 2004 never knowing that he had a child of his own — which he always had wished had.
“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.”
Finding out about her biological father only took a matter of days. Tracking down her biological mother was a more trying endeavor.
After nearly giving up and believing her mother to be dead, Hunterton heard from a cousin who provided her mother’s contact information. She decided to send her a two-and-a-half page handwritten note, hoping for the best.
Hunterdon’s mother responded, and her mysterious past was unveiled for the first time.
She was born to a black father and a Japanese mother who met at the Fort Ord military base and was born at a California hospital.
Her abandonment, she learned, was not her mother’s 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.”
She also was elated to find out that her mother had given her “Elizabeth” as her first name, which her adoptive parents chose over “Jane Doe.”
Hunterdon’s mother also revealed that she was the product of rape — although her biological father’s family insisted they don’t believe it.
“I looked deeper into this than anyone else ever has, but when all is said and done and I sit there with that question, ‘am I the product of rape?’ the one place where my soul finds peace is I don’t know if I am,” she said in a TikTok video.