Her lovely face graced Seattle’s KING5 Sunday news with an urgent message: she is looking for her birth mom. Taya Lee, named "Elizabeth Ann"  by her birth mom, lives in Olympia and is using social media – and the evening news - to find the mom who gave birth to her and then left her in a box on the steps of St. Edward Catholic Church on a January morning in 1981.

Just so happens I worked at that church in 1981 and I remember that day.

The box was left on the church steps, but the church offices are behind the building. The priest, my boss and dear friend Fr. Kieran, never went in the front door of the church. He left the rectory where he lived and went in the side door of the church. He prayed in the church every morning, early before breakfast, and then returned to the rectory – from the side entrance.

He never saw the box with the baby wrapped inside. But a young boy did and he ran to the courthouse, one block away, to get help.

When we learned of the abandoned infant, Fr. Kieran was distraught. “Why didn’t the mother just knock on my door? I could have helped her! She must be scared and that baby – could have died! The mom was counting on me to find the baby soon. And the boy, if he had just knocked, I would have helped!” Maybe the boy did. Maybe Kieran was not in the church when the boy came by.

We could not get any more information about the infant who was in custody of Child Protective Services. But for years – and I mean years - Fr. Kieran wondered about the child, the desperate mother.  He prayed for the “baby and the mother.” And every morning from that day forward, he checked the church steps, just in case.

Everyone wants and deserves to know their heritage, their life story. Taya hopes the desperate woman who gave her life will read this plea and give Taya another great gift: herself.

(S-R archive photo)

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