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Plane Jane grows up
By Denise Dick
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: Betty Jean Anderson of Garyville, La.
Further research led her to Vindicator articles and other published accounts about the circumstances of her birth.
At first she didn’t want to believe it.
“I kept saying, ‘That can’t be true,’” she said.
But she had to admit that her birth date and the woman’s name were too much of a coincidence.
One of the articles included a photograph of her mother.
“We look exactly alike,” Lazaro said.
An airline agent had found the infant submerged in a toilet in the rear of the airplane. Anderson was arrested and charged with attempted murder. She was later convicted of attempted manslaughter.
Despite the circumstances, Lazaro said she isn’t angry at her mother. She wanted to meet her.
Through more research, the mother of three adult children learned that she’ll never get that chance.
“She died in 1997,” Lazaro said. “She was only 47 years old. She had a brain aneurysm.”
Facebook led her to her mother’s sister, though. She learned she has two brothers, 40 and 31. The aunt, who lives in Ohio, told Lazaro that her mother didn’t know she was pregnant.
“She had been looking for me for years – just like I had been looking for them,” Lazaro said.
After Anderson’s death, her sister continued to look for Lazaro.
“She said my mother had tried to get custody of me, but for whatever reason, she wasn’t able to,” Lazaro said.
The birth certificate doesn’t list a father’s name, and Lazaro would like to know who he is too, but she’s happy just to learn that she has a biological family.
Because Anderson was staying with a relative in Youngstown after the birth, Lazaro is curious if any relatives might be here. Anyone believing they’re related should call The Vindicator newsroom at 330-747-1471 Ext. 1247.
Lazaro will get to meet her aunt, two brothers and other relatives later this month at a family reunion.
“I’m excited,” she said. “I’m not nervous at all. I want it to be now.”