“Burger King Baby” And Birth Mom Find Amazing Common Ground

Katheryn Deprill, dubbed the “Burger King Baby,” appeared in public with her birth mom for the very first time on Thursday for a Today exclusive interview. Deprill was able to get to know her birth mom, Cathy Pochek, this past month after her Facebook plea went viral last month. Social media reunited the 27-year-old woman with the woman who abandoned her in a Burger King bathroom.

Deprill was adopted by Brenda and Carl Hollis; she always knew that. Her parents didn’t reveal the story of how she was found in a Burger King bathroom to her until she was 12-years-old when she was working on a school family tree project. She learned that she was found as a newborn in the bathroom of a Burger King on September 15, 1986. “Someone had heard me crying and they notified the staff and they came in, I was laying there on the floor,” Deprill told Fox Baltimore.

When Fox Baltimore asked the girl about the idea of reconnecting with her birth mom, she said, “I think it’s just kind of fun, like there’s so many questions to be asked and it’s just, I am so excited about it.” This past month, thanks to reconnecting via social media, they’ve had that opportunity. In the Today interview, the Burger King duo explain all the interesting common ground they’ve discovered about each other.

“I was extremely nervous,” Pochek, the woman’s birth mom, said. “I knew I was at the advantage, because I had seen interviews that she had done, and I was just so proud of her, and how articulate she was in expressing her feelings, and grateful for her mom for a beautiful childhood that she gave her.” Pochek says that when she was pregnant with Deprill, she was 16-years-old. She had been been the victim of rape and she could never bring herself to tell anyone about it. She hid her pregnancy, and to avoid being questioned, she gave birth in her bedroom alone. Then, she took her newborn daughter to the Burger King wrapped in a sweater.

The similarities the two women share are remarkable and make reconnecting especially fun for them. Both women are EMTs. That alone would be remarkable, but the common ground becomes more uncanny. Deprill’s name is “Katheryn Ann.” Pochek goes by Cathy, but her name is “Catherine Anne.” Deprill was abandoned in a Burger King; she wasn’t turned over to foster care. That means no one had any idea what her birth mom’s name was when Deprill was being named. Even more strange, Cathy knew Katheryn’s husband when he was a child; she used to be his babysitter. Indeed, the Burger King Baby’s birth mom babysat for her own birth daughter’s husband when he was young!