No shame,blame,names

Father's Day 2005 is a day that firefighter Kevin Cull will never forget. That was the day that he and the other firemen of

Los Angeles County Fire Station 15 in Whittier were able to save a newborn baby from abandonment and near-certain death.

“It was about four in the afternoon and a really young mother knocked on the front door and she said she wanted to drop off her baby,” Cull recalled. “It was a unique moment, one that had never happened to me before, but we knew this was a chance for that baby to have a better quality of life, and we're trained as paramedics and emergency medical technicians to immediately care for a baby and a new mother.”

Cull and his colleagues sprang into action, following the rules of the Safe Surrender program that LA County has had in place since 2001. That program operates under a simple premise of “No shame, no blame, no names,” enabling new mothers who feel overwhelmed by the prospect of raising their child the chance to anonymously hand their babies over to firehouses, police stations and hospitals, giving their newborns the chance at a good life through adoption and themselves the chance to receive post-natal care to make sure they're safe after childbirth.

“We never ask the mother for her name or any ID, but we do try to have them answer questions about the baby's prenatal care so we can better determine what its needs are and what the mother's needs are,” said Cull. “The mother and baby also have matching bands placed on them so that the mothers can come back and reclaim their babies if they change their minds within the first 14 days. But only one woman in all this time has come back for hers.”

The baby Cull helped was named Tessa and soon found a new family. The following May, the Whittier firefighters were given another memorable experience, as the adoptive family returned to show a happy and thriving Tessa to the men who saved her.

“It was important for the mom to come to the station and see where Tessa's journey started from her standpoint,” said Cull. “They had the press come out and film the reunion because they wanted to have people know about the program and that this is a genuine option for those who might otherwise feel they have none.”

Salvaging life

Tessa is just one of more than 60 infants to be saved by the Safe Surrender program, but sadly, word of the program needs to spread even more as horrific tales of abandonment are still occurring.

There are probably few news stories that could disturb local readers more than the tale of Tonya Mae Schaefer, a 42-year-old Alhambra resident who stands accused of killing her newborn baby girl after the infant was found dead in March 2006 alongside train tracks in Alhambra.

The baby had been thrown over a six-foot chain-link fence and then plummeted 40 feet to the spot where she died from blunt force trauma. She had also been wrapped in plastic bags, with her umbilical cord still attached. Now Schaefer is being held on charges of murder and assault on a child causing death in lieu of more than $1 million bail.

 Schaefer's story could have ended much differently, of course, but the fact that a 42-year-old woman felt pushed into such actions shows that child abandonment cuts across age groups rather than just among teenagers and twentysomethings.

The fact that 47 states have followed California's lead in implementing such a program shows that the problem cuts across all geographical boundaries as well — and that's a sad fact that LA County Supervisor Don Knabe, who led the charge in creating Safe Surrender, understands all too well.

“These women are desperate, afraid and scared to death. They fear the baby, fear having to provide, and they obviously don't have the resources. First of all, you can't imagine someone who doesn't have one friend or family or anyone to turn to — that's the hardest thing,” said Knabe, who has worked for the county 24 years, including the past decade in his current position as supervisor. “They say abandonment runs across all cultures, and all ages too. It's not all teenagers having a baby. It runs the gamut, from young teens to women in their 40s.”

Pasadena has been spared the horror of a dead abandoned baby, but also has not encountered a Safe Surrender handoff. Nonetheless, Pasadena Fire Chief Dennis Downs wants it known that his department is ready to act when the time comes.

“Every station both here and throughout the county has infant management kits, with everything from syringes for emergencies to a blanket and knit cap if an infant needs to be warmed,” said Downs. “It's hard to say why some areas have babies turned in and others don't. Some of it is socioeconomic issues. But we have to try and salvage life whenever possible.”

Keeping secrets

Safe Surrender's requirements are simple but important for participating women to follow. They must bring the baby inside to the hospital or station themselves, rather than leaving the baby outside the building — a stipulation designed to ensure that the babies run no risk of exposure to the elements or other dangers. And in accordance with a state law that came first, women must turn in the baby within the first 72 hours to ensure it receives vital early care.

The program was developed by a task force of 40 different organizations including state and community-based groups, with the county group Children's Planning Council in charge. Their primary concern was to notify all the public and private hospitals in Los Angeles County about the program, and then to create a hotline that could help women from every ethnic background imaginable.

“We created a 211 hotline that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and through which we can advise women in 128 different languages. The state Department of Health Services put in money, plus the county Health Department and the First Five program came through with a lot of money for advertising,” said Knabe, who was moved to act in February 2002 after two “dumpster babies” were found within three months. “We worked with bus companies to put [public service announcements] on buses and bus stops, trying to figure out where these kinds of women go. The hard thing to understand is that these people who've abandoned babies didn't have a friend or family to go to: They got pregnant in secret, kept it in secret and threw their secret away.”

Knabe, who has two kids and two grandchildren of his own, takes obvious pride in the program, noting that on the rare occasions where abandonments occur and result in tragic deaths, news coverage of Safe Surrender leads to two or three other babies being turned in. It also is the rare government program that results in profound good while costing very little to implement.

“The First Five preschool program is paid by the cigarette tax Proposition 10, and they provided a lot of money for advertising out of their existing budget. Then a lot of the ad space is donated, including working with a lot of trash haulers to put stickers about Safe Surrender on their bins,” said Knabe.

“We also put stickers up on county cars and at public agencies, and every fire department in the county of LA has signed on. Even radio has public service announcements in the middle of the night to reach people up late worrying about their time of crisis. But this is so important you realize there's more to this than a law, and than all the other things you do in public office.”

Stiff sentences

Even as the county has provided all the options necessary to save the life of any baby that needs to be handed over, the government also wants the public to know that the consequences for allowing a baby to die or actively killing one are as severe as ever.

Perhaps the most perplexing case of baby abandonment currently being prosecuted is that of former USC student Holly Ashcraft, who authorities believe has left two infants for dead despite being a student at the prestigious college.

While there was not enough evidence to press charges against Ashcraft in the first incident, this time around she has plead not guilty to one count each of murder and child abuse, which carries a term of 25 years to life, but is currently free on $200,000 bail. Autopsy results have led officials to believe that the baby was born alive after a 32-week pregnancy and was found by a homeless man in a dumpster behind the popular USC-area bar The Two Nine, placed in a box along with unrelated paper trash. Intentional asphyxiation has not been ruled out as a cause of death.

“If a baby is born alive and is just left out in the elements and lives, it could be a charge of child abuse that can put them in prison for up to six years,” said Victoria Adams, head deputy of the Family Violence Division in the LA County District Attorney's office.

“If a child is abandoned under the age of 14, it can be a misdemeanor or alternate felony depending on the defendant's prior history and harm to the child. If child abuse leads to death, an enhancement sentence of four years is added.”

It can get worse, as sometimes charges of straight homicide are pressed if — as in the case of Schaefer — the death of the baby is allegedly premeditated. Then you're talking first-degree murder with a sentence of 25 years to life in state prison, or second-degree murder with a sentence of 15 years to life.

Another big sentence of 25 years to life is handed down for the charge of assault on a child causing death, which sounds like the most gruesome scenario of all.

“That involves smothering a child, strangling it with an umbilical cord or slamming its head against a toilet,” said Adams, who added grimly, “We've seen it all. Hopefully if enough people hear about Safe Surrender, we won't have to see any more.”

Tragedy and hope

Another woman who's seen way too much sorrow is Debi Faris-Cefelli. As the founder of the Garden of Angels located in the Desert Lawn Cemetery in Calimesa, she has spent the past 11 years providing a name, a dignified funeral and a final resting place to all the deceased abandoned babies who arrive at the LA County coroner's office.

She teams up with several other businesses that donate free services, such as a Redlands florist who donates the flowers, a Redlands mortuary chapel that provides the caskets and funeral services and a Highland-based business that presents a dove flight at each infant's funeral. Faris-Cefelli, who began the garden by purchasing 27 plots at the cemetery but has seen its numbers swell to more than 78 dead babies, will never forget the moment she first felt moved to action.

“I saw on the news that a baby had been found on the side of a highway, inside a duffel bag that said ‘Lifesaver' on it. I heard it on the news while making dinner for my three children and it really spoke to my heart that we needed to help it,” said Faris-Cefelli. “I wanted to help that baby be buried with dignity.”

Soon she convinced the coroner's office to send her the infants, and through her own work and the assistance of others, she has managed to find moments of beauty, sometimes infused with hope.

“There's quite a few people who turn out for the funerals because they feel that child is part of their family also. People donate money to help out, and we do fundraising events and we do that a lot for public awareness of the program because another tragedy would be for these children to die in vain,” she said.

“But we knew they had a purpose. I feel like what I deal with is tragedy and hope. The tragedy is every time a newborn child's body is discarded, the hope is every time they're surrendered. That's my inspiration — to save lives and reach mothers before they give birth so they'll make a wise and loving choice for their baby.”

Pretty remarkable

That wise and loving choice made by an anonymous young mother in Whittier on Father's Day 2005 has also changed the lives of Donna Leavitt and her family forever. They are the ones who adopted Teresa, and received notice about the infant four days after she was turned over to the firemen.

The Leavitts already had two kids of their own, but were on a waiting list to adopt a baby of either gender under two years old.

“There's so much to say I could talk to you for an hour about Safe Surrender. The downside is we don't know where the mother is, but it was a Hispanic girl who had no medical care, who birthed her in a motel room and wrapped the baby in a towel,” said Leavitt.

“She held the baby through the initial process, then she walked off when they put the baby on the gurney rather than going to hospital with it for her own care. That's a pretty remarkable thing, and I think Tessa was special that she was loved so much by her mom that she gave her over safely. We wish so much that we could tell this girl that Tessa is so loved.”