Patrons and fast-food workers at a Burger King heard crying coming from the bathroom. When a worker decided to investigate, they found a tiny baby girl tucked under the sink.
It was September 15, 1986, and Katheryn Deprill was just hours old when her mother made the decision to leave her in the fast-food restaurant's bathroom stall.
But Deprill's story has a happy ending, much like Halle Burke, who was left in a fire station and adopted by loving parents. Deprill would go on to be adopted by supportive parents, eventually becoming an EMT and a mother of three.
Yet there was always a part of her that was missing: the knowledge of where she came from. She never resented her birth mother, though she always wondered what happened.
“I can’t imagine what she had to go through,” Katheryn said, in a 2014 interview. “She could have been in a very abusive relationship. There are so many things that could have been, and you don’t know until you walk a mile in her shoes.”
On September 15, 1986, Katheryn Deprill's biological mother walked into a Burger King bathroom and abandoned her. The baby was only a few hours old.
Patrons began to hear the cries of a baby, and Deprill was quickly discovered underneath the sink by fast-food workers. She was wrapped in nothing but a red sweater. The mystery of the "Burger King Baby" made national news.
What kind of mother would do this? That was the question on everyone's minds. It would take Deprill 27 years to learn the answer.
Deprill would later be adopted by Brenda and Carl Hollis. It wasn't until she was 12 years old and working on a family-tree project for school that her parents told her she was adopted.
They handed her a photo album with newspaper clippings and baby photos.
"You just wonder where you come from,” Deprill said. “I would never want to replace my adopted family, but being adopted, a part of you is missing and unless you’ve been adopted, you really just don’t understand that.”
In 2014, when Katheryn was 27 years old, she went on Facebook and posted a photo of herself holding up a sign that read: "Looking for my birth mother. She gave birth to me September 15th 1986. She abandoned me in the Burger King bathroom only hours old, Allentown PA. Please help me find her by sharing my post. Maybe she will see this. Thank you.”
After just two weeks, Deprill's biological mother, Cathy Pochek, contacted her. So what happened all those years ago that brought Pochek to a Burger King bathroom?
When she was 16, Pochek was raped while traveling abroad. Ashamed of the pregnancy that resulted, she hid it from her parents and everyone she knew. She secretly gave birth in her own bedroom, then hours later walked into that Burger King bathroom and left the baby there.
Deprill said she understands why. "She left me somewhere she knew I'd be found," she said. "She did not want to throw me away."
Pochek knows that she will be judged, but she believes it is worth it if she can convince another mother to do things a little bit differently.
"If we can help some other girl who is in the situation that I was in, it’s worth a little bit of judgment that people might bring upon us. If it’s just one girl that we can help, it’s worth it," Pochek said.
So what kind of mother would do this? It seems a young, frightened one, but one who still wanted the best for her baby.
