Years After Adopting A Baby In Infamous Fashion, A Couple Exposed Her Wild Past

On September 15th, 1986, the fryers sizzled, the drive-thru speaker barked, and the kids got their happy meals at the Allentown, Pennsylvania Burger King. Workers and satisfied customers thought it a typical afternoon — until they heard shrieks in the bathroom.

Only a baby, they knew, could produce those piercing wails. The Burger King crowd politely minded their business, thinking, "ugh, that parent's got their hands full with a fussy child." But as the clock ticked, the screams never quelled.

The manager on duty went to investigate. From the moment he opened the door, the cries, no longer muffled, filled the restaurant. He knew something was terribly wrong.

Wrapped in a sweater, the red-faced baby was lying on the floor beneath the sink. With no sign of a parent or responsible guardian, the manager realized the child was abandoned. Judging by her looks, she was just a few hours old.

With the newborn's health at risk, Burger King's staff promptly called an ambulance. EMTs arrived and confirmed the manager's suspicions: the baby girl was maybe 3 hours old and, thankfully, healthy. This was only a small comfort to onlookers, who all felt tremendous sorrow for the baby.

Allentown Police arrived on scene to attempt tracking down the person responsible for abandoning the baby. Realistically, there wasn't much to go on. One officer commented, "Right now, we're the only thing this kid's got in terms of a family."

Police turned to the public, pleading for someone to turn themselves in. An EMT cuddling the rosy-cheeked infant voiced what a lot of responders were thinking, "I'm sure whoever gave her up is having a very hard time right now."

The "Burger King Baby" was the hot one-liner on all the local news stations. The police department hoped the continuous press coverage would trigger a guilty conscious. Still, no one came forward.

After exhausting all investigative resources — fingerprinting, interviews — and the baby remained parentless. They moved to put the little girl up for adoption. Several months after her chaotic entry to the world, the baby went to her first home.

Brenda and Carl Hollis learned of the abandoned baby in the bathroom from news reports. The couple was eager for a child of their own, so they adopted the "Burger King Baby" and finally gave her an actual name — Katheryn.

So it was 12 years of a normal suburban childhood — dance class, sleepovers, homework at the kitchen table — until the Hollises decided it was time to tell Katheryn the truth. She'd known she was adopted but not the painful details of her abandonment.

When words failed them, Brenda and Carl showed Katheryn an album of press clippings. Over the years, Katheryn wore the pages from use. "I would never want to replace my adopted family," she said, "but being adopted, a part of you is missing and unless you've been adopted, you really just don't understand that."

But Katheryn carried on with life. After she graduated high school, she entered the medical field as an EMT ambulance driver, possibly a call to duty after the care she'd received in her most helpless time of need.

At 27, the now-married adult with her own child understood the challenge of bringing life into the world. Holding and mothering her own baby took the ever-present curiosity about her birth parents from a small flame into an all-consuming blaze.

Where does a regular person turn when they want to reach the masses? Facebook, of course. Katheryn hoped her snappy nickname would make people click the share button. So, she grabbed her markers, jotted down her unique story, and trusted the internet to come through.

Her photo, linked to a page titled Katheryn "Burger King Baby Deprill" quickly caught traction online. In the span of 2 weeks, 30,000 people shared her post. The power of social media circulation paid off, and Katheryn got the message she'd waited 27 years for.

Prepared for a hard-to-swallow serving of neglect, Katheryn was stunned by the story in her inbox. A woman named Cathy Pochek reached out, and she admitted she was her biological mother that left her in the public bathroom.

The message detailed how guilt ridden Cathy was for the ultimate act of abdication, but it was done out of the sheer desperation of a traumatized child. Cathy was 16 at the time, and she'd gotten pregnant as the result of a rape.

Her assault took place on a family vacation abroad. Gutted and wracked with shame, Cathy never confided in anyone, let alone her family, about the attack. When she returned to the States and discovered her pregnancy, she couldn't handle the reality.

In Cathy's teenage eyes, leaving her baby in a public space, where she surely would be found, was the only way out of her predicament. After giving birth to her daughter alone in her bedroom, she kissed her forehead and left her in the Burger King.

Katheryn sympathized. She thought of her own son, and how easy it is to make a mistake on the heels of trauma. Cathy had acted out of fear, but now they had a chance to move forward.

Following an initial meeting, Katheryn, Cathy, and Brenda were invited to share their story on NBC's TODAY. For all three women, it was a major step towards healing and forging a new relationship, but they also discovered some funny family coincidences.

For starters, they share the same name. Cathy's full name is Catherine Ann, and Brenda unknowingly named her daughter Katheryn Ann. Both women drive the exact same car, down to the color. Cathy worked as an EMT, just like Katheryn.

Besides their many mother-daughter likenesses, Cathy and Katheryn shared another strange connection. Cathy babysat a little boy who grew up to be Katheryn's husband. In a small way, the universe brushed them past one another. It's easy to ignore some curious similarities we share with strangers, but what if, like in Cathy and Katheryn's case, it turns out to be so much more than coincidence.

Most of us have been told, at some point, that we look "just like" someone else. But what if there was really something to it? For one Virginia woman, she simply laughed off all the talk that she and a friend were lookalikes — at first. But as she dug deeper into her past, she discovered a shocking truth that gave Cathy and Katheryn a run for their money.

Rachelle Dyer, a Seattle-based elementary school teacher, moved her family nearly 2,500 miles to Virginia to take a job as an assistant special education teacher at Tallwood Elementary in Virginia Beach. She knew there'd be plenty of changes — though she wasn't ready for all of them.

It was a big change for Rachelle, who left her twin sister, Kristelle, and her adopted family behind in Washington for a place where she had no relatives or friends to speak of. But the faculty at Tallwood quickly took a liking to the new teacher — though it was for a reason no one expected.

Apparently, Rachelle looked almost identical to a former Tallwood teacher named Shannon Nicoll, who was now working at nearby King's Grant Elementary. Rachelle didn't see it at first, but the more photos of Shannon the faculty showed her, the more she noticed how similar they looked.

Word of the uncanny resemblance eventually reached Shannon, who couldn't help but admit that she and Rachel did look very much alike. But all of these comparisons were, of course, just a matter of opinion. The two had never met!

Though all that changed in 2009, when a mutual friend invited Rachelle and Shannon to a Kenny Chesney concert. Upon seeing one another for the first time, they both felt that it was "almost like looking in a mirror."

Yet, as amazed as they were, the two women wrote their resemblance off to pure coincidence. They agreed to remain friends, though a decade later, Rachelle and Shannon would make a discovery that'd turn more than just their two worlds upside down.

In early 2019, the principal of Tallwood Elementary suggested Rachelle take a DNA test. The school was running a student ancestry project at the time, and so she figured some of the teachers would enjoy learning about their own family history, too.

Rachelle, curious to see if the test would reveal anything about her biological mother, obliged, but all that came back was the name Tracey Hall, an apparent cousin. Hoping to find out more about her past, Rachelle eagerly reached out.

The moment Rachelle told Tracey her name, the stranger knew exactly who she was. Tracey searched for the words to explain the thoughts that raced through her head, and when she found them, she revealed a secret that her mother, Susan Hall, had confessed to her many years before...

According to Tracey, her aunt – a woman named Janice Ainsley – had put twin girls up for adoption back in the '60s when she found she couldn't care for them. If Rachelle was truly her biological cousin, then that made Janice the twins' birth mother!

Unfortunately, Janice passed away by the time Rachelle came calling, though that wasn't the end of her search for her missing links. Though her biological mother had given her and Kristelle (pictured) up, she had two more daughters with another man just a few years later.

The couple had then relocated to Virginia Beach, where Janice's children were still living. One of the daughters was a woman named Lisa Holley Vann. The other? Shannon Nicholl.

Rachelle couldn't believe it — there had been something behind her resemblance to Shannon after all. Not only were the two teachers related, but, being that they shared the same mother, they were actually half-sisters as well!

When Shannon and Lisa got the news about their long lost half-sisters, they were shocked. "Lisa and I had no idea at all that our mother had even given birth to twins in the past," said Shannon. "[Rachelle and Kristelle] knew that they were adopted all these years – so for us, it was pretty mind-blowing."

Right away, the sisters knew they had to meet for dinner to finally get to know each other as family. And the moment the four women sat down, they immediately realized that their similarities were more than just skin deep.

From their voices to their personalities to even their interests, the four sisters were nearly identical. Even Shannon's children couldn't believe how much Rachelle and Kristelle reminded them of their mother and aunt.

"Both of my children came to the dinner and every time the four of us would laugh they put their hands over their mouths because they couldn’t believe how much we sounded like each other," Shannon recalled. "I mean, we were finishing each other’s sentences."

Eventually, the sisters' incredible story went viral, and even major television shows began to take notice. In fact, all four women were invited to appear on Good Morning America, so that they could share their amazing journey with the world.

To the four of them, this reunion felt like an act of divine intervention, one they were certain their birth mother had a hand in coordinating after her passing. And while Kristelle still lives in Seattle, the sisters vowed that their bond would remain strong forever.

"I’ve never had my own family in Virginia Beach. And Lisa and Shannon don’t have the mom they grew up with there anymore," Rachelle told GMA. "But I like to think that now they have two new pieces of her in me and Kristelle." These women were lucky to have each other.