41 years ago, a beautiful baby girl was found by two pilots abandoned at the gate of the Reno airport in Nevada. The 10-day-old infant was quickly adopted into a loving family and named ‘Elizabeth,’ but the little girl grew up always wondering about the circumstances that led to her abandonment. Speaking to PEOPLE, Elizabeth Muto Hunterton shares:
“I was about 10 days old. I grew up my entire life trying to figure out what I did in those 10 days that ultimately led to them saying, ‘Let’s just leave her at the airport.'”
Catherine and Tom Muto became foster parents to the baby girl, and eventually adopted her. The Muto’s gave Elizabeth a wonderful life full of love and support for all her endeavors, including her time participating in beauty pageants and eventually being crowned the first black Miss Nevada.
As the years went by, Elizabeth’s curiosity about her heritage kept gnawing away at her and she finally started seriously investigating her mysterious past. But it proved to be a very difficult task due to there being zero information to go off of. She didn’t know her actual date of birth, her place of birth, or even her race. A private investigator provided by TLC’s Long Lost Family was also unsuccessful in uncovering any leads for Elizabeth to follow.
It wasn’t until this past August when she utilized DNA testing from 23andMe that Elizabeth finally made some headway in her search and was connected with some extended biological family members.
“It was really through this process of finding my birth mother that I’m able to rewrite my narrative,” she says. “I had really prepared myself to be rejected by both sides of my biological family… And It ended up being so much more beautiful than anything I could’ve written.”
Through these DNA discoveries, Elizabeth learned who her biological father was, and that he passed away in 2004 without ever knowing Elizabeth existed. The first three female matches Elizabeth reached out to in hopes the women would be her mother ended up being distant relatives.
“When this all started unfolding, there were certainly points that I thought to myself, ‘Maybe I’ll just walk away now,’ because it just got hard,” she said to PEOPLE.
Elizabeth finally made a connection to someone who ended up being a second cousin and was able to identify two women who could be her birth mother or aunt.
With much trepidation, Elizabeth penned a hand-written letter to one of the women, gently explaining who she was and stating she believed the woman to whom she was writing was either her biological mother or her aunt. She soon received an e-mail response from the woman, who confirmed she was in fact Elizabeth’s birth mother.
“When I received her email, she shared that she wasn’t able to take care of me as she believed I deserved,” Hunterton recalls. “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.”
“I was shocked to hear from her and by the amount of research she did. It was all very overwhelming and brought back a lot of painful memories. However, it’s also a tremendous blessing to find out what a strong and wonderful woman she turned out to be. One day, when we’ve all healed a bit more, hopefully we’ll be able to meet.”
“She says, ‘All my hopes and dreams are in you. I never thought that anybody that looked like you could come from me, somebody that’s poised and eloquent and successful. Those are just things that never happened for me. But here you are.’ So now she’s living her life, and it’s pretty beautiful to watch her heal and kind of come to life.'”
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