A toddler who was surrendered to a Kentucky fire station in a shoe box as a newborn has been adopted by the family who fostered him for over 500 days.
It was May 2022 when a woman handed over her newborn baby boy to a firefighter at the station at River Park Drive in west Louisville, reports WDRB.
“We were with Samuel from the very beginning. It was early morning, close to shift change, when his mother rang the doorbell here,” said Lt. Col. Bobby Cooper, assistant Louisville Fire chief.
He noted that the city’s fire stations plan to install more Safe Haven Baby Boxes—climate-controlled containers that alert first responders when an infant has been placed inside—because Samuel’s mother had to deliver her newborn directly to a station employee.
“Samuel in the arms of our firefighters, seeing the need, like the reality of it, has encouraged us — I guess is the best way to say it — to put in more Baby Boxes and has prompted the community to work with us to install more Baby Boxes,” said Cooper.
Samuel got his name from his foster-turned-adoptive parents, Brittany and Chris Tyler.
The Tylers heard of the surrendered baby on the news, and immediately began hoping that he would be placed with them. In total, the family has fostered 17 children and adopted three.
“… that night I prayed that we would get the call because I knew he would go to a foster family,” Brittany told the local outlet.
“We had been trying to have a baby for a while and it wasn’t working out and we looked into adoption through an agency and it was very pricey so we looked into fostering because we wanted to be able to help and have babies in our home,” Brittany explained.
As soon as she got a call asking if she would take the baby in, she knew she would call him Samuel.
“I hung up and I said, ‘His name is Samuel. It can’t be anything else,'” she recalled. “Because I prayed for him.”
The baby’s new dad, Chris, referred to a biblical story to explain the name choice.
“In the book of 1 Samuel, Hannah prays to God that she would be able to have a son and He granted what she had asked to have and so she named him Samuel. So, that’s why we named him Samuel,” he said.
The Tylers have held onto the shoebox their son was given to the fire station in, along with a note from his biological mother.
“… just included a little note with it saying that she loved him and handed him over to the firemen,” Chris said.
“It’s hard to imagine he fit in this box. He’s so big now,” Brittany added.
The boy, described by his parents as “hilarious” and always “happy, laughing, running around,” is now just a few months shy of his second birthday.
“Through the Safe Haven Baby Boxes we’ve been able to meet other families that have done this as well and see some of the other children that have been adopted this way and there’s just beautiful families being made through this,” Chris said.
The Louisville station where Samuel was originally given up has stayed connected to the Tyler family. Samuel even celebrated his first birthday by returning to see the firefighters with his new parents.
“With this it’s kind of unique, it’s not a structure fire, it’s not a car wreck, it’s not a gunshot, it’s not something that we see often but our firefighters are completely prepared for it,” Lt. Col. Cooper told the outlet. “And there aren’t many things more vulnerable than a brand newborn baby, which Samuel was at that time and we’re incredibly proud of our members for the work that they did to get him to where he is today.”
He explained that the role of the fire department is to help, not judge, in emergency situations:
We don’t ask people why they were in the car wreck when we’re on an emergency incident. We don’t ask people why their house caught on fire when we’re fighting that fire. We don’t ask somebody why they may be in any medical emergency. When people don’t know what else to do, they call the fire department. So clearly, a mother in a crisis situation isn’t sure what to do and we’re another option for her. Where she can come to a fire station, whether it’s here in Louisville or any other states that have the Safe Haven baby laws, she can come to a fire station and she can surrender that baby.
Even though the Tylers will likely never meet Samuel’s birth mother, they are very grateful to her.
“We love her and cherish her and thank God for her for what she did for Sam,” they said.