I reported on a baby left in a dumpster. Three years later, I got an unexpected phone call

It was a crisp, sunny October morning in 2000. I had just arrived at the television news bureau in Idaho Falls, Idaho, where I was bureau chief, when a police sergeant I knew called with a tip. A man collecting aluminum cans from dumpsters nearby had found what he thought was a doll. Looking closer, he realized it was the body of an infant. "You need to get over here," he said.

An officer was stretching crime scene tape across the gravel alley when we arrived. Detectives stood around a yellow dumpster and a funeral home van waited at the end of the block. I watched a detective climb into the dumpster and hand a small bundle wrapped in towels to a man who placed it in the van and drove off.

I had covered countless difficult stories by then. Standing behind that tape, I stopped thinking about my live shot. Who could feel so desperate that this seemed like the only option? It hit close to home. My husband and I, married seven years, had been trying for a baby and had just been told we would never conceive.

In the days that followed we learned that an 18-year-old woman who had hidden her pregnancy from her father and brother had delivered the baby alone in the family bathroom and left him in the dumpster. An autopsy suggested he had never taken a breath.

A few days later I interviewed the young woman's father. He mentioned something I had never heard of, a baby “safe haven” law, which allows parents to safely and legally relinquish newborn babies. Idaho did not have one. He wondered whether things might have gone differently if his daughter had known she could surrender her baby safely at the fire station blocks away. I remember thinking, Idaho needs that law, and I knew someone I could call.

I contacted Idaho State Senator Bart Davis, whom I had interviewed many times. He took the idea and ran with it, and I kept reporting as the bill moved through the Idaho House and Senate. In the spring of 2001, Idaho's safe haven law was signed at a fire station in Idaho Falls. I was covering the story when then-Governor Dirk Kempthorne called me to the front of the room, handed me one of the signing pens and told me my fingerprints were all over the law.

Two years passed. Then the same police sergeant called with very different news. A woman had given birth to a baby girl at the hospital and left a handwritten note surrendering her under the safe haven law. He knew my connection to the law, but also knew we desperately wanted to adopt.

I left messages for our adoption caseworker all afternoon. No one called back, and we went to bed that night believing the baby would go to another family. The next morning, as we left for work, the phone rang. I listened to my husband answer questions. A little girl? Bring a car seat? You need a baby name?

My grandmother Lillian had died six weeks earlier, and we had decided that if we ever adopted a girl we would name her Lillie. We gave the hospital her name and drove there. She was beautiful, bright-eyed and weighed 5 pounds, 3 ounces. An hour later we carried her out and took her home. I like to say I became a mother in a phone call.

Lillie always knew she was adopted. When she was little I explained that my tummy was broken and a kind woman I called her “tummy mommy” had kindly shared her with us. Safe haven surrenders are anonymous by design, and I assumed that was all we would ever know. Years later an unexpected DNA test match led us to her biological mother, Laina. Lillie was 16, and I told her she could meet Laina whenever she was ready. A few weeks later, Lillie was ready. The mother who gave up her baby 16 years earlier held her daughter again through tears. Laina has since come to Lillie's graduation and her 18th birthday, and Lillie has met several half sisters.

Safe haven laws are now in all 50 states. That’s the good news. My concern is that too many people still do not know about them. The laws also vary widely, including how many days after birth a baby may be surrendered, making it even more important that a parent in crisis understands the law and their options.

Most of all, I want education. Imagine if every student in grades 7-12 spent five minutes a year learning about the safe haven law in their state. They would grow up knowing that if they, or someone they know, ever faced a crisis with a newborn, there is a safe and legal option. No baby should be left in a dumpster, a restaurant bathroom or outside a truck stop because someone did not know help existed.

I now serve as Director of Media Relations for the National Safe Haven Alliance, which runs a 24/7 crisis line. Surrender is not always the answer. Sometimes a mother who calls the crisis line wants to keep her baby, and we help her find the support and resources she needs to be that baby’s parent.

Twenty-six years ago I stood behind yellow tape staring at a dumpster, wondering who could feel so desperate. Sometimes I am still asking that question. I will continue working to make sure everyone knows there is another option.

Suzanne Hobbs is Director of Media Relations at the National Safe Haven Alliance and a former television news bureau chief and anchor in Idaho Falls, Idaho. She now lives in Florida, where she writes children’s books and continues her advocacy for newborns and mothers in crisis.

All views expressed in this article are the author's own.

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