Baby Left in Florida Safe Haven Box Adopted by Firefighter Who Found Her

A baby girl was left at Florida’s only Safe Haven Baby Box in Ocala six months ago at Ocala Fire Rescue Station 1. 

“Today, Baby Zoey is a happy and healthy little girl in large part thanks to the Safe Haven Baby Box and the rescuer who opened the box, who would become her adoptive father,” News 6 reported this week. 

The firefighter who was stationed at Ocala Fire Rescue headquarters and discovered the baby girl with a shoelace tying off her umbilical cord is now her adoptive father. He and his wife had been trying to start a family for more than ten years, so once he took the baby to the hospital, they began the process to adopt her, according to the report. Click Orlando did not identify the adoptive parents out of respect for their privacy.

“It wasn’t real until I got the call I could go in there with her in the NICU,” the adoptive mother said. “We’ve been trying for almost a decade to have a family, and everything has kind of not worked out for us. So we are like, ‘Don’t get our hopes up, don’t get our hopes up.’”

Her mother added that everyone was in “disbelief” and that she felt like Zoey had been “hand-delivered” to them. Both adoptive parents commended Zoey’s birth mother for her decision to give the baby a chance at life. 

“I think it’s very respectable, what she did,” Zoey’s adoptive mother said. “We really felt in our hearts that we wanted to let the birth mom know in some way, shape or form that she is safe, she is happy, and she is very loved.”

Monica Kelsey, founder and CEO of Safe Haven Baby Boxes brought the baby box to Ocala in 2020 at the request of the mayor, the report states. She is currently working to install a second box near Gainesville, adding to the 153 around the United States. 

Baby boxes are installed in a wall where the public can access it from one side and first responders on the other side, like at a hospital or fire station. The public-facing door locks from the outside once a baby is placed inside and an alarm immediately alerts rescuers. Each box has a heater and a cooling unit. Officials previously noted that newborns placed in a Baby Box are “attended to within five minutes, medically evaluated at a local hospital and adopted within 30-45 days.”