Loudoun authorities hold memorial service for newborn girl found dead in Sterling pond The baby weighed seven pounds when she was born, one of the few certain facts of her brief life. If the newborn girl had a name, the first responders who found her floating naked in a man-made pond in Sterling on the morning of April 7 couldn't have known it. The infant became "Baby Doe," defined first by a short list of grim autopsy results. The little body revealed no clear cause of death, no certain ethnicity. There was only the poignant fact of an empty stomach, proving she hadn't lived long enough to nurse. Months later, despite an investigation and outreach at local schools and community service organizations, the Loudoun County detectives overseeing the case still struggle with unanswered questions. On Tuesday morning, the Loudoun County Sheriff's Office held a public memorial service for the infant, since renamed "Baby Michelle" - an attempt to offer closure to those touched by the baby's death, to encourage anyone with knowledge of the baby's mother to come forward, and to share information that might prevent similar tragedies. In her 12 years of law enforcement work, Loudoun County Sheriff's Deputy Shannon Petrakos had never worked an unidentified infant fatality case before. For months, she debated several names for the child, wanting to posthumously give her some sense of identity. Then Petrakos's older sister, Michelle, died suddenly about a month ago, and the convergence of sorrows decided the infant's name. As the region grieved the lives lost in Monday's mass shooting at the Washington Navy Yard, Petrakos was among the two dozen community members, first responders, volunteer firefighters and sheriff's deputies who gathered in the powder-blue chapel of Adams-Green Funeral Home in Herndon to mourn the death of one small child. There was no one at the service who had known or loved Baby Michelle, no one who had held her, no one to share a story or offer words that might convey the impact of her absence. Instead, the funeralgoers came bearing the weight of their own memories, taking their places quietly and clutching tissues in their fists. There were the local couple who lost their newborn in 1991; the chaplain who was deployed in Iraq when his child was stillborn; the detective who assigned her sister's name to another life that had also ended far too soon. They sat in rows facing the altar, where a bouquet of roses tied with pink ribbon laid atop the tiny white casket, beside a stuffed teddy bear - plush and new, untouched by a baby's fingers. Several speakers ascended the podium in turn to address the mourners. Two chaplains shared prayers. A nurse read a poem. One member of the Sterling Volunteer Fire Company talked about Virginia's safe haven law, which offers protection to any mother who wants to surrender a newborn within the first 14 days of his or her life - so long as the baby is safely delivered to an employee of a hospital, emergency room or emergency medical rescue squad; no action will be taken against the parent, according to law enforcement officials.