April Paul was found in a phone box in 1994 with her umbilical cord still attached
A woman who was left in a West London telephone box as a newborn now considers her rescuer as “family” – but believes she will never receive the answers she seeks from her birth mother.
April Paul, 32, was discovered in a phone box on April 30, 1994, with her umbilical cord still attached, by Joe Campbell, 62, and was subsequently adopted by a family three years later. In 2016, at the age of 22, April campaigned to be reunited with Joe, who had been prevented from making contact with her by CPS throughout her childhood.
Having come across April’s appeal in the news, Joe stepped forward, and the pair now see each other “nearly every week”. Attempts were also made around the same time to reconnect with April’s birth mother, and she managed to visit her home in 2016, sharing a brief conversation, but has not heard from her since.
A decade on from that encounter, April says “realistically” she will never obtain the answers she needs from her mother.
April, a bank worker from West London, says: “Joe is complete family. It’s like I was adopted again but in the right way this time around. His kids are my siblings now. We’re so close, we stay at each other’s houses. He never stopped thinking about me. I don’t know what this man is – an angel.”
April was abandoned on April 30, 1994 and found by Joe who called police after seeing what he first thought was ‘a bag of chips’. Joe was unable to contact April during her childhood but never forgot about her. But 22 years on, when he spotted April’s appeal to track down her rescuer, the two were finally able to reconnect.
The pair now share a deeply close bond, with April referring to him as her “guardian angel”.
She told Talk to the Press: “The truth is I absolutely do still want answers from my mum. I think a part of me probably always will. I wish more than anything that I could understand why she left me and have the answers to questions I’ve carried around my whole life. But realistically, I don’t think I’m ever going to get those answers from her.”
She added: “Continuing to search and holding onto the hope that I might eventually get them is actually causing me more hurt. My daughter said to me the other day, ‘Mum, how do you know how to be a mum when you never had one?’ I said, ‘it’s just natural, you know that.’ She said, ‘why couldn’t your mum be your mum?’ I just said, ‘I don’t know'”.
April’s relationship with Joe has continued to flourish ever since their reunion in 2016, with the two seeing each other regularly. She said: “Joe saved my life 32 years ago, but he’s so much more than the man who found me.”
She added: “Three weeks ago Joe had knee surgery as he’d been struggling at work with his knees for years. He put off the operation as he couldn’t not work for his kids and stuff. He’d just had operation anyway and his kids had planned to come over to my house for dinner. Joe turned up limping after his operation – he wasn’t even supposed to be there.”
April added: “I said ‘what are you doing here?’ Of course he brought me loads of shopping, gifts and perfume. He’s the type of man you would call in the middle of the night and he would come straight away”.
April is now raising funds to help Joe enjoy an early retirement. You can contribute to her fundraising campaign on Gofundme here.
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