MADAWASKA, Maine — The St. John Valley once again has popped up in someone’s search for biological family roots.
David Volk of Plainfield, Pennsylvania, recently received confirmation through multiple DNA testing companies that he has a genetic connection to families from northern Maine.
Gary Skillings, a commercial pilot living in Florida, was united with aunts and cousins in Madawaska last year, following a similar DNA search.
It turns out that Volk’s genetic research revealed he and Skillings actually are fourth cousins. Linda Dube of Madawaska, who helped Skillings in his search and is an avid genealogist, also is related to Volk.
Volk’s story goes back to the week before Christmas in 1977, when his birth mother apparently left him, just minutes old, in a McDonald’s restaurant bathroom in Newark, New Jersey. It was there that restaurant manager Wilhelmenia Dinkins found him, umbilical cord still attached.
State officials who took custody initially named him Christopher McDonald because of the holiday and where he was found. Within a few months, David and Rhonda Volk adopted and renamed the baby.
Volk had never given much thought to finding his birth mother until he heard about the case of the “Burger King baby,” Katheryn Deprill, he said via telephone recently.
In 2014, after using social media to assist in her search, Deprill was reunited with her mother, who had left her at a Burger King in 1986.
Inspired, Volk went on Facebook to get the word out that he was looking for his birth mom, but he also paid for DNA tests through three different genetic ancestry companies — AncestryDNA, Family Tree DNA and 23andMe — in an effort to locate family members.
He is not certain his mother was from Aroostook County, but the DNA evidence indicates she has family ties in the area. The genetic indicators and the research of genealogists such as Dube who are helping Volk also have linked his mother to the Levesque and Soucy family trees.
The DNA results are limited to the information in the databases, however, and so far, Volk has only been able to connect with third and fourth cousins on his mother’s side in Aroostook.
Another genetic test has linked his birth father to the “Belyea” family tree, which also has ties to northern Maine. The closest match he has uncovered on that side, however, is a fourth cousin.
He is hoping that with the help of the genealogists he will be able to find other possible family members who are willing to swab some saliva for DNA tests to further narrow down his search.
At one point early in his endeavor, Volk was contacted by a woman who heard about his search and contacted him to say that her mother had been pregnant in the Newark area in 1977 but had never brought a baby home. She thought they could be siblings, but a subsequent DNA test revealed there was no genetic connection.
Volk remains hopeful he will someday learn the identity of his birth mother.
The only clue about her from the day he was born in 1977 comes from Dinkins’ daughter, who was at the McDonald’s at the time. She told her mother she noticed a woman leaving the restaurant who was wearing a long coat with blood stains on the back. She said the woman also appeared to be wearing scrubs or a similar medical-type outfit.
One of the best outcomes of his search so far occurred last year, when Volk located Dinkins and made a trip out to Texas to see her for the first time since she found him as a newborn. His story also has been told in several newspaper and television accounts in the last couple of years.
The connection to Aroostook and to Skillings and Dube is new, however, and he said it gives him some new hope that his search will not be in vain.
He also has a son of his own now — Jeremiah, who is just 1½ years old — giving Volk another reason to learn more about his birth parents.
“One of the big things I’m hoping to learn is about family medical history,” he said.
Persons with information that may be related to Volk’s search can contact him at davidv122077@gmail.com.