Woman abandoned at birth meets dad who ‘never knew she existed’ 24 years later

A woman who was abandoned as a newborn has found her birth father with the help of ITV show Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace.

Sarah Meyer was left in the stairwell of a Surrey car park in 2001 and is now the youngest person to search for a relative on the show, which is hosted by Davina McCall and Nicky Campbell.

Shortly after Sarah was abandoned, she appeared on ITV’s This Morning as a newborn baby in a bid to track down her parents.

Dubbed the ‘Baby in Pink’ due to the pink towel she was wrapped in, Sarah was on the show with police sergeant Wendy Whiting, who was the first officer on the scene when she was found.

Judy Finnegan, who hosted This Morning at the time alongside Richard Madely, told viewers: ‘This little sprog was abandoned in a multi-story car park. She was barely an hour old, weighing just 7lbs.’

But despite the public appeal, Sarah’s parents never came forward.

She was adopted at the age of three months by Jo and Pierre, who already had another adopted daughter, Jess.

24 years later, Sarah, who has a degree in cyber security and now lives in Northern Ireland with her girlfriend, is returning to TV screens in tonight’s episode of Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace.

On the show, she was able to find out more about her birth parents after DNA tracing located them.

‘I’d like an explanation because it is something that is missing…to know where I come from…why was I abandoned?’ Sarah says in the episode, during which she returns to the car park where she was found for the first time.

After she was found, police sent infant Sarah straight to the hospital, where nursing staff took her under their wing.

‘I was named Caroline after the nurse who looked after me, and Pembrooke after my car park. It’s like a little secret identity of mine. It’s a part of my history, which is very important to me. Even with my name now, my middle name is Caroline,’ Sarah reveals.

From a box of police evidence, Sarah reads a letter sent to the police ten days after she was found: ‘Please look after my little girl. I love her so much, but just can’t cope with another baby. Thank you to all the police officers involved, hospital staff, and the members of the public for their help. Thank you.’

The Long Lost Family team managed to track down Sarah’s birth mother, who was in her late teens when Sarah was born, but she did not wish to appear in the episode.

Sarah says: ‘It’s good to hear that she’s at least alive and is out there. It leaves the door open for her to come and meet me if she wants to. And I’ll never close that door…I want her to see that I’ve lived a good life, and I want her to see that I’m not angry with her.’

However, Sarah’s father was keen to meet her. He had no idea that she had been born, and wondered if his late mother would have seen her granddaughter and not known it, as she’d worked at the hospital unit where Sarah was taken to.

His identity is obscured in the episode to protect Sarah’s birth mother.

He explains it’s been hard to process both that he didn’t know about Sarah and that he wasn’t there for her, adding that he was ‘a bit of a lad back then’ and that his encounter with Sarah’s birth mother was brief.

Long Lost Family host Nicky Campbell told Sarah’s father about her adoption, and he noticed the resemblance between them after being shown a photograph.

On Monday, Sarah returned to This Morning to give hosts Cat Deeley and Ben Shephard an update after she met her birth father.

Watching a clip from her appearance on the show in 2001, she said: ‘It was crazy seeing that again and being back here…It’s insane, full circle, because I’ve been able to find my birth parents.’

She added that she’d always known her story, revealing that her foster parents had shown her clips and newspaper articles from her past.

‘Any questions I’ve had, they answered,’ she said, ‘I love them for that.’

Discussing her motivation for appearing on Long Lost Family, Sarah said that as well as wanting answers about her past: ‘I wanted to show who is out there that I had a good life…I wanted to show them that I am ok.’

And speaking about her birth father, she revealed: ‘The fact that me and him are so alike is insane… for him to welcome me into his family the way he did was insane.’

Meanwhile, Sarah reiterated that ‘the door is always open’ for her birth mother to get in touch.

‘I’ve had 24 years of being able to process my story. She’s had just this short amount of time to process it, so it’s gonna be a long time and I understand that, and I will give her that time,’ she said.

Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace airs tonight at 9pm on ITV1.

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