A baby girl who was successfully surrendered at Florida’s only Safe Haven Baby Box has been adopted by the very firefighter who rescued her.
The surrender happened on the morning of January 2 in Ocala, Florida. The infant, who is now named Zoey, was left inside the fire station’s Safe Haven Baby Box, which is a temperature-controlled, monitored box where a parent can safely and anonymously surrender their infant per their state’s safe haven law.
The firefighter, who wishes to remain anonymous for privacy, told TODAY that he fell in love with Zoey the minute he saw her. “She had a little bottle with her and she was just chilling,” he said. “I picked her up and held her. We locked eyes, and that was it. I’ve loved her ever since that moment.”
He said that he and his wife had been trying for years to adopt, so in a spur-of-the-moment decision, he decided to send a handwritten note to the hospital where Zoey was taken after she was retrieved per standard protocol.
“I explained that my wife and I had been trying for 10 years to have a baby. I told them we’d completed all of our classes in the state of Florida and were registered to adopt,” he said. “All we needed was a child.”
Upon hearing the news, his wife was in tears.
“It wasn’t real until I got the call I could go in there with her in the NICU,” she told News 6. “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.’”
In an unfolding of events the couple describes as “God helping us out,” their wish was granted and they were able to bring little Zoey home with them on January 4. Her adoption was finalized in April.
“Everyone was just in disbelief, honestly, that she was hand-delivered to us almost and that everything had kind of worked itself out to where we could bring her home two days later,” the new mom said.
The man and his wife are telling their story to the media with the goal of giving the birth mother “some closure,” and letting her know that Zoey is safe and loved.
“I think it’s very respectable, what she did,” the adoptive mom 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.”
