A Florida firefighter who spent 10 years trying to have a baby of his own finally got his wish in January, and it happened on the job.
It happened on January 2 when a baby girl was dropped off at a Safe Haven Baby Box at the MLK First Responder Campus in Ocala, about 80 miles northwest of Orlando.
An alarm went off at 2 a.m., said the firefighter who eventually adopted the baby girl as his own. While mostly everyone at the station was asleep, he and another Ocala Fire Rescue employee set out to see what was going on.
The firefighter who adopted the child has chosen to remain anonymous to protect his family’s privacy, but he recalled opening the box, revealing a baby girl wearing a pink beanie and onesie. She had a matching blanket and next to her was a pink bottle, he told USA TODAY.
He knew immediately that he wanted to raise her as his own.
“When I walked into the front office where the box is located, I opened it and saw my beautiful daughter laying in it,” he wrote in an email.
The Safe Haven Baby Box program has locations in Indiana, Kentucky, Arkansas, Florida, New Mexico, North Carolina, Tennessee, Pennsylvania and Arizona.
The boxes are located outside of fire departments and emergency response buildings. They have silent alarms so people can drop off babies “no questions asked,” according to the program’s website.
The baby girl in Florida, eventually named Zoey, was the 23rd baby dropped off nationwide since 2017, according to the Ocala StarBanner, part of the USA TODAY network.
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Locking eyes with the baby girl told him all he needed to know
Once the alarm went off and he headed outside to open the box, the firefighter picked the child up and walked her into the station.
He asked his teammate to get the rest of the crew together so they could see if she needed medical treatment but she didn’t seem to be in distress at all.
She seemed fine until he put her on a table to do a medical exam, so he picked her up again and held her until the ambulance arrived to take her to the hospital. At this point, the pair locked eyes, he said.
“I instantly fell in love with her,” he said. “As soon as she locked eyes with me, she instantly stopped crying and she didn’t stop looking at me until I delivered her to the emergency room.”
He and his wife have been trying to have a child of their own for 10 years. The couple has undergone fertility treatments and looked into adoption as well.
He was initially going to write down his contact information and give it to the ambulance crew but his own teammates pushed him to accompany the baby to the hospital. Once there, doctors suggested he write a note as well.
After the baby was taken to the hospital, he called his wife to tell her what happened and burst into tears. The couple tried not to get too excited because they didn’t want to be let down, he recalled.
His wife contacted the hospital’s case worker and an emergency room doctor also hand-delivered his note to the hospital social worker.
Doctors who treated her said she was less than 12 hours old and likely wasn’t born at a hospital. She spent two days in the NICU under observation before the firefighter and his wife were able to take her home, her father said.
The next day, his wife received a phone call that they could eventually take the child home, but not before taking care of a few tasks such as finding a pediatrician, taking a few safety classes, hiring a lawyer and lastly, naming the baby.
She had about an hour to come up with a name on her own since her husband was at the scene of a fire. She texted him a bunch of names and after looking them over, he thought of the name himself: Zoey.
Her adoption was finalized just a few months later, the Ocala StarBanner reported.
Adjusting to life with her mom and dad
During her first few weeks with the family, baby Zoey was pretty observant and sleepy, her parents told the Ocala StarBanner.
Now that she’s nearly 6 months old, she tries to grab everything she can and has quite the appetite, her mother said.
“She is doing very well and reaching all her milestones,” her father said.
She’s quite curious and loves to play with her toys, he said. She also loves when her parents read to her.
The couple told the Ocala StarBanner they will tell Zoey about her adoption once she’s older and if she decides she wants to learn more about her biological family, she’s welcome to do so.
The firefighter has no information about the baby girl’s biological parents. His wife told the Ocala StarBanner she’s glad the Safe Haven Baby Box exists.
She also has a message for the baby girl’s birth mother.
She has “a lot of respect for her” and wants her to know the baby girl is “thriving.”
Contributing: Austin L. Miller
