Emily Yanich-Fithian was befriended on Facebook by Mia Fleming on Dec. 1.

Yanich-Fithian, 35, a Lewisberry mom who recently started driving school buses for the West Shore School District, wrote a quick note back: "I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are," she told Mia Fleming.

"And then I just went about my day," she said.

Later, she was shopping at the Target on Carlisle Pike with her two children — Braydon, 8; Victoria, 4 — when she got a call from a friend, Chris Astle.

"Are you sitting down?" Astle asked her. Yanich-Fithian thought Astle, who is also 35, was about to tell her that he and his wife were expecting a baby.

Instead, the news was about another baby: the one she and Astle had found on the doorstep of a Vienna, Va., townhouse 20 years ago, the one they’d called each other about every Sept. 6.

What's followed since that has been a blur: happy tears, network television interviews, a front page story in The Washington Post, and well-wishes from all over the country and from friends who've seen the story.

The baby from the doorstep is now Mia Fleming, 20, an art student at the Ringling College of Art & Design in Sarasota, Fla. Her adoptive family lives in northern Virginia and this month, all families — Astle’s, Yanich-Fithian’s and Fleming’s — will finally meet.

"I can’t wait to hug her," Yanich-Fithian said.

"I was so tongue-tied. I told her that a piece of my heart is not filled," she said.

Coming full circle

Yanich-Fithian and Astle, of South Riding, Va., were 15-year-olds who took a walk to a 7-Eleven to buy cigarettes one fall day in 1989, and came across a newborn wrapped in towels on the front doorstep of a townhouse.

Authorities would later tell them that the baby girl was born just 12 hours earlier. Her umbilical cord was still attached.

The teens brought the baby inside to Yanich-Fithian’s stepfather, Bill DeLancey.

"When they came up the driveway, I thought they had puppies or kittens," DeLancey said.

Within about 20 minutes, an ambulance arrived. “They swooped in and swooped out in seconds,” DeLancey said. “They were doing their jobs, but it was very impersonal.”

But it wasn’t the last Astle and Yanich-Fithian would see of Mia. They tried sneaking into the hospital to visit her days later. Then, a few weeks later, a cousin of Yanich-Fithian’s working at a grocery store in northern Virginia told her she’d been chatting with customers with a cute child. The customer turned out to be Mia’s foster parents.

Somehow, they made the connection that the baby was the one Yanich-Fithian and Astle had found. The foster parents had named the baby Emily.

Not long after that, Yanich-Fithian and Astle received a baby photo in the mail from the baby’s adoptive parents, who renamed her Mia Fleming.

After that, there’d been other attempts, Yanich-Fithian said. Though she and her family moved to Pennsylvania, Chris Astle has remained in northern Virginia. Over the years, he’d tried contacting the Department of Welfare to reach Mia. Two or three years ago, Yanich-Fithian said, they even reached out to Oprah Winfrey, hoping she could help.

Mia Fleming tried contacting Yanich-Fithian and Astle before, without much luck.

She found out about the incident by accident at age 9. According to The Washington Post, she used social networking sites in search of a Chris Astle. But it wasn’t until she’d found an Emily Yanich-Fithian on Facebook that Mia knew she had the right match.

Until recently, there’d always been curiosity, a feeling of emptiness and a sort of anger, Yanich-Fithian said. “I was angry for a long time that someone would leave their child like that,” she said. “I’m so happy she’s happy, and I want her to stay in our lives.”

She said she expects the upcoming meeting of the three families, near Fleming’s adoptive parents’ home in northern Virginia, will bring closure to that anger.

Her stepfather, husband and children will be with her on the journey. She told 8-year-old Braydon the story.

"He said, 'Mia can have some of our family, too'."