In 1965, Steve Mulvihill was a 19-year-old sailor in the United States Navy. When he and his fellow sailor, Jim Kennedy, were spending time in Hong Kong, they found themselves in a situation Mulvihill couldn't have imagined and didn't really talk much about until around 10 years ago: A man sold them a baby.
"All of a sudden, we were fathers," Mulvihill recounted nearly 60 years later in Berthoud's Cornerstone Cafe on Friday.
The two took the baby to a nearby orphanage, and with the closing of two large doors, Mulvihill never saw her again. Now, decades after that fateful day, the veteran is doing whatever he can to find out what happened to that little girl.
Steve Mulvihill and the 18-Month-Old Baby
Mulvihill, who grew up near the finger lakes in New York, said he joined the military because he wanted an education and wanted to move away from home.
When he started in the Navy in 1964, he was trained as an electronic technician, but was eventually assigned to a river boat running supplies during the Vietnam War and eventually served with a Beach Jumper unit. He served two tours in Vietnam and was in the Navy until 1968.
"It was all a learning experience," he said. "I came from ... literally a cow town and went to the big city and was exposed to southeast Asia pretty quickly. I was in shock most of the time."
But it was in 1965, a year into his service, that Mulvihill's experience took a turn for the unique. While on liberty, or a brief leave of absence from a ship, he said he was able to visit Hong Kong, a place he found fascinating between the rooftop cities and the completely different culture from what he was used to.
On a second trip back, he brought his fellow sailor Kennedy with him. As he and his friend were walking down a road near a pier of fishing boats, a man standing next to a red boat beckoned them over.
Since the man couldn't speak any English and they couldn't speak any Chinese, the three used hand motions back and forth to figure out what the Chinese man was trying to say. They thought at first the man was trying to sell them something like a watch, but they realized he wanted them to buy a young girl, who Mulvihill assumes was around 18 months old.
"We didn't really believe it," he said, adding the two did not think the man was seriously going to sell them a child.
Mulvihill recalled that the man requested $100, but between the two of them they only had $50. When they gave it to him, the man simply handed the two young men the baby.
"All of a sudden we had this little girl and I was like, 'what are we going to do with this little girl,'" he said, adding she did not cry or squirm when she was handed over.
From there, the two young men anxiously worked to figure out what to do. Their first thought was to bring her back on the ship and take her home to America and bring her to an orphanage; that idea, Mulvihill said, lasted for about a minute.
Eventually the two started walking and ended up being followed by a group of citizens who seemed frustrated with them. As they kept walking they found their way to a police officer directing traffic, who pointed them in the direction of a large building up the road. Mulvihill said he will always remember the building, specifically for the two large doors at the entrance.
The two sailors knocked and were greeted by a young nun. At the time, they were not aware that they were visiting a location of the Sisters of St. Paul de Chartres, a group that dates back to the 17th century and has had locations across the world, including in Hong Kong since 1848, according to the group's website. He said the building, at the time, served as both a convent and an orphanage.
He said the nun was taken aback by the fact that two sailors were walking around the city with a baby. Despite her minimal understanding of English, they were able to -- sort of -- explain the situation and tell her they wanted her to take the baby, which she agreed to do.
"She shut the door and that was it," he said. "The baby was gone and we were out of money."
But he wasn't left with nothing. All these years later Mulvihill still carries a slide from his 35 millimeter Kodak camera that was taken that day. Though dark, the picture shows Mulvihill and Kennedy standing next to each other, the baby in Mulvihill's arms.
At the bottom he had written "Jimmy + Me holding baby man tried to sell me for 100 dollars."
The Search Decades Later
Mulvihill said that after the incident, he didn't really talk about what happened, including when he got back to the USS Skagit. He only really started discussing it in passing to other veterans around a decade ago.
But earlier this year, he got in touch with and sat for an interview with Brad Hoopes, a Loveland resident who has spent years collecting and sharing the stories of veterans, often posting them to YouTube as he did with Mulvihill's story.
Hoopes said the Navy veteran told him that there wasn't anything left in his bucket list but to find and reconnect with this girl, who would be around 60 years old now.
"That hit home," Hoopes said.
Since then, the two have been working together to try and track down what happened to the girl. This has meant working to get back in touch with Kennedy, doing research into who might have some answers as to where the girl could have gone and getting in touch with the Sisters to see if they can help.
While he has been in contact with one member of the group, Mulvihill said she has not been able to locate anyone quite yet and seemed unsure if they would get any answers, with the woman adding that maybe Mulvihill may see the girl in Heaven someday and he can finally learn what happened to her.
"It's an almost (insurmountable) problem," he said, later adding, "We're only looking for one in God knows how many million people. It's just the uniqueness of the whole situation that gives us some hope."
But all this time, Mulvihill simply wonders what happened to her, saying he wants to know where she ended up and, hopefully, that she was OK.
He hasn't given up hope, still thinking of new ways that they can search or find answers, including trying to scour adoption records from kids coming out of Hong Kong at that time.
"Something's going to click," he said.
And though he is unsure of if he will ever see that little girl again, Mulvihill said he isn't thinking about what he might say to her, but what she would say to him and the stories she would have.
"I think everybody's here for a purpose," he said. "And that situation was so unusual that I believe we were meant to save her. I want to know what the rest of the meaning was."
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