Newsday from New York, New York • 3

4 4 A tot abandoned a quest Over 40 years ago a young brownhaired woman wearing a short red jacket over a red dress boarded a subway train at Coney Island carrying a week-old infant girl inside a suitcase Four stops later she took the newborn 6-pound baby wrapped in a pink and white blanket a baby bottle in its folds out of the suitcase and lnM it on the seat of the subway car headed toward Manhattan Then Bhe vanished That was at the Avenue station in Brooklyn When passengers heard the cries they alerted the motor-man- The police arrived and the abandoned baby girl became Page One news and got her first name Miss Subways For the next year she was a number assigned by the city's Child Welfare Bureau Number 2095 She Dennis Duggan NndarArilUiits Tin gram-up Jeanns Martin la front of a nibway train sho was abandoned on a subway in 1955 had been literally thrown away have two children and they mean everything to me I know I could never do something like that I went through what some people tell me was a grieving process First I was angry then I entered a denial stage and finally acceptance not angry any more If I had been adopted and raised by cruel people perhaps I would be I had a good childhood I lacked for nothing I wasn't spoiled either I was given But now Jeanne Martin wants some answers Who is the woman who left her behind? Was she in trouble? And she wants to know what her nationality is what her religion is and whether she has broth ms and sisters I think about that woman I think about a young frightened girl in trouble and my heart goes out to In December she appeared on the television show which is where I first saw Jeanne Martin Before that she appeared on CNN and on NBC with Bryant GumbeL A year ago after a barrage of replies that led nowhere she hired Joe Brandine a veteran private investigator who runs his business out of Farmingdale He once was employed by the parents of Etan Patz who disappeared in May 1979 from his home in the Village and has never been found Brandine says he thinks he has narrowed his search to the Coney Island or Brighton Beach sections of Brooklyn He bases this assumption on a search of hospital records in the area am looking for someone who may be known as Marilyn Bidenski or he says may be Russian or Polish and she would be in her late fifties or early sixties and around five feet four inches tall with blue or green eyes and blonde hair am trying to help Jeanne find a missing part of her he says And Jeanne? want an identity I have no Jeanne says if true mother shows up I would ask her why what was so terrible in her life and even if she said I hate kids I wouldn't care I have a mother but now I am looking for the woman who brought me into Hie was shuttled between city hospitals and then turned over to a Catholic orphanage the Angel Guardian Home on 12th Avenue in Brooklyn Thirteen months after she was left behind on a subway seat she was adopted and given the name Jeanne And now she wants to fill in big puzzle in my life the am soys Jeanne Martin She is 40 years old and the divorced mother of two children She lives in Wading River in Suffolk soys her daughter Heather 18 a freshman at St Joseph's College in Patch ogue She says her brother Michael 20 and sne support their mother's search for her birth mother They understand her anguish when she looks at a birth certificate that reads: of Birth: Independent Jeanne puts it simply want an identity I have been assigned everything my religion my name even my birthday I want to know who I am and why I was left on a She began in earnest to search Sir some dues to the mystery of her early life me this has nothing to do with my adoptive parents Bill and Marge They were great I grew up in an Ozzie-and-Harriet home They told me I was adopted and I often introduced myself by saying Jeanne because a neighbor told me I was a special child because I had been chosen by In the summer of 1992 she told her adoptive mother that she planned to seek out her adoption papers I hud been told I was adopted I was never told that I had been abandoned I said I wanted to know about my records for health reasons because of my two children knew I was serious and she sat me down and told me the whole story When she told me I had been abandoned I was devastated But I angry at my adoptive mother She said she had never told me about befog abandoned because she wanted to protect' me It was realty an act of love on her But Jeanne now 36 was spurred to uncover the mystery of her early life and to try and find the woman who had left her to the fates when she placed her on a subway seat and fled So in 1992 the search for the mystery woman be-- Officer holds newborn four decades ago attar she was found abandoned hi a subway car gan in earnest And in December 1992 during a search of newspapers in the library came her first big break a front-page story in the New York Daily News about Subways" showing her in the arms of transit Patrolman Brony Dounorick gave me the first description I had ever had of this mysterious ghost in my life What's more I found the article dated Dec 12th 1955 on the anniversary of my Jeanne says that I saw that tiny baby in the picture I knew it was me I jumped up and shouted: because I was just about ready to give up After that her emotions swung wilcjy thought of how I could have been picked up by someone who nice I was hurt thinking aboutthefact that I NEWSQAY THURSDAY APRIL 29 8.