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A firefighter in Ocala, Florida, was working on the night shift in January, when she was awakened at 2 am for an alarm. He recognized the sound immediately. A newborn was placed at Safe Haven Baby Box of the building, a device that allows someone to deliver a child safely and anonymously without asking questions.
Newborn left in box is adopted by firefighter who found her. Photo: Reproduction
“To be honest, I thought it was a fake alarm,” said the firefighter, who wants to remain anonymous to protect his family’s privacy to Today.com. But when he opened the box, he discovered a healthy baby wrapped in a pink blanket. This baby would become his daughter Zoey.
“She had a bottle with her and was just relaxing,” he recalls. “I caught her and held her. We looked at her, and that’s it. I love her from that moment.” The firefighter and his wife fought for over a decade to have a baby, and the wheels in his head began to spin.
“I didn’t care about my wife immediately because I didn’t want to wake her up,” he says. He then decided to go to the hospital to take the baby and asked if he could adopt it.
At the hospital, the firefighter, who is also a paramedic, wrote a note and left with Zoey. “I explained that my wife and I had been trying for 10 years to have a child. I told them that we had completed all our classes in the state of Florida and were registered to adopt,” he says. “All we needed was a child.” When the firefighter finally spoke to his wife, she began to cry.
“I was like, ‘don’t get too excited,'” he says. “My biggest fear was that the note I wrote wouldn’t stay with Zoey and she left. These were very stressful days.”
Zoey was placed at the Safe Haven Baby Box of the station on January 2. On January 4, she was at home with the firefighter and his wife. The couple adopted Zoey in April.
“The way I found it… It was God helping us,” he says, adding that it is difficult not to cry when the story tells. The firefighter says he is sharing the story in the hope that this will give Zoey’s biological mother “some outcome.”
“We want her to know that her son is being cared for and that she is loved beyond words,” he says. One detail I later knew at the hospital is that the baby’s umbilical cord had been tied with a lace.
There are 148 Safe Haven Baby Boxes in the United States and 31 babies were safely delivered, according to the organization’s website.
Devices are controlled by temperature and have a cradle style bed inside, easy to recover. Safe Haven Baby Boxes founder Monica Kelsey spoke at a press conference in January, the same day Zoey was delivered.
Baby that was left in the box – Photo: Playback Today.com
“We want to approach parents who legally deliver this child. And now I’m going to talk straight to her or him,” she said at the time. “Thank you. Thank you for keeping your child safe. Thank you for bringing your child to a place you knew you would take care of this child. And thanks for doing what you think was best.”
