Past Still Haunts Man After Being Abandoned in Airport Bathroom as a Baby

By Amanda Thomason August 23, 2018 at 1:04pm

Steve Hydes looks like your average 30-something guy. He has a friendly demeanor, a girlfriend, and two kids that he’s particularly proud of.

It’s those kids who have compelled him now more than ever to reflect on his own childhood and attempt to locate a few missing pieces.

Steve wasn’t always named Steve. Shortly after April 10, 1986, he was dubbed “Gary Gatwick,” and before that his name was allegedly Michael.

Hyde was found at just 10 days of age on the floor of a women’s restroom in Gatwick. A woman named Beryl scooped him up after realizing he was a baby wrapped in blankets, not just a pile of rags, and waited for his mother to claim him.

Beryl waited. And waited. But no one came. No flustered woman ran back into the bathroom realizing she’d left her precious child: no one sent out a message about a missing baby.

There was only silence as the 10-day-old boy wrapped in a blue-and-white blanket waited for someone to take him home.

Police investigations went on for some time as they tried to figure out who had left him. The most they ever got was a call from a young woman claiming that she was the boy’s mother, the boy’s name was Michael, and she was too young to have a child and feared her father’s reaction.

The boy was adopted by a couple who had tried for their own children for nearly a decade. Sandra and John welcomed “Steve” into their lives, and he grew up in their care.

“I’ve got a great family. I’m luckier than most,” Steve admitted.

They were always honest about his beginnings, though: growing up, he knew he was adopted after he’d been abandoned. It always bothered him, not knowing where he truly hailed from.

But his love for his daughter spurred him to seek his mother once again. One day when he and his girlfriend, Sammy, were driving around, he blurted out how he couldn’t imagine why someone who loved their child would ever abandon it.

It is a strange case. The baby was well taken care of when he was found. He wasn’t unhappy or fussy or dirty. Someone had obviously loved him.

But as time passes and no one comes forward, the chances of Steve finding his biological mother seem to be slipping away. Unfortunately, since the case is over 30 years old now, the evidence the police kept in their records has been destroyed.

Steve has done all he can to find any other scrap of information. He even met up with the people initially responsible for his discovery and care, speaking to them in the very place he’d been abandoned.

“They knew more about me in some ways than I knew about myself,” he said, according to The Guardian. “What amazed me was how much they cared.”

“Beryl told me she’d thought about me every single day, for more than 20 years. I hadn’t expected that.”

He was even DNA tested in an attempt to find some shred of connection to another family. The results pointed to some distant cousins of his, but he was thankful for even that.

“This is worth so much to me,” he said. “It places me somewhere, it gives me a place to say I’m from. I’m European; I’m maybe from England. I link in somewhere, even if I only have a vague notion of where. There are people somewhere on the planet who are my very, very distant relatives. And all of it matters.”

Whether or not his mother has seen his messages, read the stories printed about him, or is even still alive, Steve still wants some sort of closure and connection.

“I want her to know that I’m not angry with her and there will be no publicity if she comes forward,” he said. “But there are so many things I’d like to ask her, and so much I’d like to know about my background, and Alanna’s. And it’s not just a mother I’m hoping to find – it’s an extended family as well. I might have siblings, cousins, aunts and uncles, even grandparents.”

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