Boy Abandoned Two Weeks Before Christmas Birthday

The father and stepmother of a 12-year-old boy abandoned him at a bus station less than two weeks before his Christmas birthday, leaving him with a letter saying they could no longer care for him.

The youth wandered the city for six days before walking into a state youth services office Wednesday. He wore clean clothes and was carrying a bed roll, backpack and duffel bag.

The boy, whose name wasn’t released, asked for a place to live and gave workers a letter, apparently written by his stepmother and signed by both parents.

“To whom it may concern. I am writing this letter to tell you we can no longer care for our son, Mark. … My husband (the boy’s natural father) just found out he’s dying from AIDS and he doesn’t want Mark around, and I can’t care for Mark alone,” reads a portion of the note, detailed Saturday in the Deseret News.

The boy also carried a birth certificate and told social workers he is a “blizzard baby,” born on Christmas Day during a winter storm.

“This boy has no one. His parents have left him, and we have no way to find them or talk to them. He says he has no kin anywhere,” said Randy Ripplinger, spokesman for the Utah Department of Human Services.

The boy said he never had been to school and that his family lived a nomadic life, finding shelter in abandoned homes and meals at soup kitchens.

The boy is staying in a shelter and will spend Christmas and his birthday there. Juvenile Judge Frederic Oddone will decide Tuesday whether he should go to a foster home.