Baby found in airplane toilet in 1973 learns about birth, finds family

YOUNGSTOWN

In February 1973, a woman birthed a baby girl on a United Airlines jet airliner at the former Youngstown Municipal Airport and tried to flush her down the toilet.

That baby, dubbed Plane Jane Doe, was adopted and raised by a Connecticut couple, but she always wondered about her birth mother.

Zuri Lazaro learned as a young child that she had been adopted, but all she knew was that her mother was 22.

“The question has always been there,” Lazaro, 42, of Bridgeport, Conn., said.

Lazaro never knew her nationality and she couldn’t answer questions on medical forms about family history.

When she learned that a new Ohio law opened adoption records, she filled out the forms and sent them in.

Two weeks later, she got a copy of her birth certificate bearing her birth mother’s name. Further research led her to Vindicator articles about the circumstances of her birth. At first she didn’t want to believe it.

Read much MORE in Sunday's Vindicator.