Linda Znachko founded He Knows Your Name Ministries to provide unclaimed babies with dignity in death, and she started it in October of 2009 after coming across a heartbreaking news story about a baby who was discarded in a dumpster.
“I was listening to the news and heard about a child’s body found in Indianapolis. They said, ‘Baby Doe was found in a dumpster wearing a diaper.’ That story turned my heart upside down,” she said in an interview with Broken Halo.
“When I heard that, I thought, Doe is not a name, a dumpster is not a grave, and a diaper is not burial clothing. This was shortly after I had buried my mom and given her a beautiful funeral and celebration of life.”
“It was fresh in my mind that my mother is a child of God and deserved all that honor and dignity, and so did this baby. Yet, nothing about this baby’s situation looked like honor or dignity. So I called the coroner’s office, and I asked a lot of questions.”
Linda learned from the coroner that when babies are unclaimed, they get placed in a mass grave with no headstone or anything, which Linda found deplorable.
She wanted to do something to change this, and she asked the coroner if she could bury the baby from the news story. He told her that since the baby’s death was being criminally investigated, he couldn’t hand the baby over to her.
Linda spent the next 13 months calling the coroner each Friday morning for updates, and ultimately, Baby Doe was released to Linda.
She then gave him a name and a funeral, and ever since then, she has been giving unclaimed babies the dignity they so deserve. Taking to TikTok, where she goes by @lindaznachko, Linda went into more detail about unclaimed babies.
“There are babies that are unclaimed, and what I mean by that is that their parents have signed legal paperwork releasing their own responsibility for their baby in death,” Linda explained in her video.
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“I don’t judge them for that, but as I become their guardian, legally, and I sign all the paperwork at the funeral home and the cemetery, I have the right to give them a celebration of life, and I am so honored and privileged to do that.”
“I don’t know why the parents don’t come. I don’t judge them for that. They have reasons, I’m sure, and so I just leave it at that, and I take care of these babies.”
Linda says these parents know their babies have passed away and that she’s taking care of them in death. Linda designs and buys headstones for these babies, and her hope is that their parents, one day, come to their graves to honor them.
By Bre Avery Zacharski
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