Ms Chris Atkins, an abandoned Chinese baby brought up by her adoptive parents in England, has had an emotional meeting with the young woman police constable who took good care of her after she was left on a staircase in a resettlement block in Wong Tai Sin on Christmas Day in 1962.

Married with two daughters and working in an Adoption Unit in England, Ms Atkins has visited Hong Kong twice in a bid to find out her birth history and locate her natural parents.

Her rendezvous with retired Woman Sergeant Chan Miu-fong took place in the Police Sports and Recreation Club on April 2 with the arrangement made by Senior Inspector Peter Lau Yun-keung from Wong Tai Sin District. He has gone to great lengths to help Ms Atkins with her root-finding mission.

The abandoned baby case was assigned to retired WSGT Chan when she was working in the Report Room of Kowloon City Police Station just 10 days after passing out from the former Police Training School. Ms Atkins was the first abandoned baby placed in the young constable's care. Following the procedures for handling such a case, she took the baby to the Kowloon Hospital for medical check-up, liaised with the Social Welfare Department and assisted in the application for a Care and Protection Court Order, before the baby was finally placed in the care of the former St Christopher's Children Home in Tai Po.

Though losing count of the many similar cases she had handled, retired WSGT Chan still managed to recollect the case of Ms Atkins upon being informed by SIP Lau that Ms Atkins was anxious to meet her.

She told OffBeat of her feelings at the meeting: "The baby girl has grown up. For me, the meeting was like a reunion with my own daughter I haven't seen for a very long time! It was emotional for both of us when we hugged each other."

She told Ms Atkins that Wong Tai Sin and Kowloon City were the areas where many migrants from the Mainland took shelter after the Second World War, and therefore this might form part of Ms Atkins' heritage. She also told Ms Atkins that woman police officers took care of many abandoned babies in the 1950s and 1960s, and showed her a brochure, which illustrates, among other police duties, how the police handled cases of abandoned babies in the old days.

This is how SIP Lau sees the meeting: "It was an emotional meeting. I think Ms Atkins also had the same feelings as Chan Miu-fong. I can't say the meeting was a perfect ending because we haven't found her natural parents, but it was the next best thing we've done for her."

Root-finding mission

After being in the care of the orphanage for about one year, Ms Atkins was flown to England to join her adoptive family. Subsequently she felt an urge to search for her birth history and natural parents. After having done a lot of research in England and established contacts with a Chinese daily in Hong Kong, Ms Atkins embarked on her mission in April last year.

On arrival in Hong Kong, Ms Atkins lost no time in looking for the place where she was found. With the help of the Hong Kong Adoption Unit and her newspaper contacts, she was taken by a Housing Officer on a tour of the locations in Wong Tai Sin where resettlement housing blocks once stood and the sites of former squatters areas where refugees from the Mainland lived in the 1950s and 1960s. She also went to the Public Records Office to look for archived pictures of Wong Tai Sin in the 1960s, and met former residential staff of the St Christopher's Children Home. But all these did not bring Ms Atkins closer to her mission. Eventually she turned to Wong Tai Sin District for help as a last resort.

With some clues provided by Ms Atkins, SIP Lau eventually managed to locate the microfiche file of Ms Atkins' case at PHQ. The file contains all the original police statements and details of Ms Atkins' case, place and time she was found, clothes she was wearing, name of the hospital she was taken to, and transcript of an advertisement that went out on the radio appealing for information.

"Seeing the file was a sort of comfort to Ms Atkins because the file shows she was in good health when abandoned and the police took good care of her in the first instance. After seeing the file, she might have realised that circumstances had forced her parents to abandon her and this might have made her feel better," said SIP Lau.

In March this year, Ms Atkins made another trip to Hong Kong, this time with her husband and two daughters to tie up some loose ends of her mission and later requested SIP Lau to arrange a meeting with retired WSGT Chan.

After returning to the UK, Ms Atkins sent SIP Lau an email to express her "eternal gratitude" and thank him for his "beyond the call of duty" assistance. She also thanked retired WSGT Chan for her willingness to meet her.

Ms Atkins (centre) with SIP Lau and retired WSGT Chan in PSRC