Former Miss Nevada Who Was Abandoned at Airport as a Baby Will Finally Meet Biological Mom (Exclusive)

"We're closing a loop here," Elizabeth Hunterton tells PEOPLE, "or maybe opening another one"

• Former Miss Nevada Elizabeth Hunterton was found about 10 days old by two pilots in January 1980.

• Since 2020, she and her birth mother have been exchanging texts and emails, she says.

• Through reconnecting with her biological family, she also learned the truth of what happened when she was left at the airport as a baby.
  

A former Miss Nevada who was abandoned as a baby at an airport and then connected with her birth mom in 2020 will finally meet her in person this week, she says.

"I spoke to my birth mother for the first time on Jan. 1 of this year," Elizabeth Hunterton tells PEOPLE exclusively. "It did take us quite some time to even be comfortable with that."

Hunterton, 44, initially spoke with PEOPLE in 2021 only months after she first connected with her biological mother — and decades since she was found about 10 days old by two pilots at a Nevada airport in January 1980.

Since 2020, Hunterton says the two had exchanged text messages and brief emails, though she acknowledges that sometimes there "was a good maybe year and a half where she just wouldn't respond to any of my messages," noting it "was part of her healing journey."

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In January, the two finally had a call, Hunterton says.

She recalls: "We just said, 'I think if we're going to start this year by proving to ourselves that we can do hard things and not letting fear win, let's just talk on the phone.' "

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Hunterton recalls that their talk "blew her mind."

"It was like, I remember you — and it was just this really weird, unsettling moment," she says, describing how she felt as though she knew her birth mom's voice. "I guess I just didn't expect to recognize it, and it was very sweet, talking to her."

"She was like, 'You know, you are the last person I ever expected to hear from, but I'm so happy you found me,' " Hunterton adds.

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Hunterton, who was crowned as Miss Nevada in 2004 and has worked for the organization as CEO, was raised by a white family in Reno, uncertain of her own identity, PEOPLE previously reported.

She tracked down her biological dad in 2018, through DNA databases, but learned that he died in 2004.

Her online DNA profile got a few hits in March 2020 and she reached out to three different women thinking they could be a match, but she learned they were only relatives — not her mother.

Then after connecting with a biological second cousin, she was finally able to reach her biological mom, whose identity she has not publicly disclosed.

Ultimately, Hunterton says, she learned the truth about her birth parents: Her father was Black, her mother was Japanese and her abandonment was not intentional.

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"'I didn't have the physical, emotional, mental or financial capability to care for you in the way that you deserved, so I gave you to my friend, and she was supposed to take you to an adoption agency,' " Hunterton says of the email she got from her birth mother after they first connected. "'When I found out that she had left you at the airport, I didn't handle it well.' And so, she was shocked. She didn't know I was left at the airport until eight months later."

Hunterton now speculates that her mom's friend tried to take her to an adoption agency, but "the adoption agencies wouldn't take me because it was harder to place a Black baby."

She says she hasn't been able to track down the woman her left her, but says her birth mom "really tortured herself because of that."

"Once I found her, she said, 'You know, now that I know that you're okay, would it be okay if I allowed myself to live?" I'm like, " 'Girl, live your life. Fly, baby bird. Live your best life. You're torturing yourself for something that I never believed you needed to be forgiven for.' "

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After their initial phone call, Hunterton — who says she has become close with her second cousin and other distant relatives she has met through her extensive genealogy research — learned that her biological mother's family had a reunion but she wasn't invited, to the dismay of her cousin.

"I don't know that I would be entirely comfortable with attending a family reunion where everybody is," says Hunterton. "That's a lot at once. She had said, 'It's time. I think you need to meet her. She needs to meet you. Let's make this happen.' "

This weekend, Hunterton, her husband and her relatives — including her birth mom — will reunite "in a neutral territory."

"They rented a house, so that way, if either of us just needs space, if we need to go for a walk or we need to just go someplace and not be around people, we can do that," she says.

The journey to that reunion, along with the exhaustive search to find her mom, has given Hunterton an opportunity to share her story on TikTok.

"I was talking to my best friend, and she was like, 'You know what? Even though your story is unique, there is this great universality in it because, at the end of the day, it's about identity,' " she says. "'You have this superpower of helping people feel seen' "

Hunterton now has nearly 130,000 followers. "When I talked to my therapist about it, he said that that would be a really helpful part of my healing journey, to just learn how to talk about it," Hunterton says. "That was why I got on there. I didn't expect it to do what it did, you know?"

As she unpacks her life and reflects on the upcoming reunion, Hunterton says there are "threads of happiness" — but she admits there is an also lot of fear.

"While it might be unlikely, I'm scared that she will be disappointed or wish I had become something more or something different," Hunterton shares. "Nobody wants to be a disappointment or fall short of what somebody's hopes and expectations were, especially when they paid so dearly for them."

But for Hunterton, her kids and her husband, there is some excitement.

"[My husband] knows that we're closing a loop here or maybe opening another one," she says. "Who knows?"

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