A Florida firefighter has officially adopted a baby who was placed in the state's only Safe Haven baby box.
Vincent, who asked that his last name be withheld for privacy reasons, told "Good Morning America" he was on duty during the early hours of Jan. 2 when the alarm connected to the baby box in Ocala, a city located in central Florida, went off.
"Dispatch called the station stating that the baby box had been activated. I got out of bed, walked over with another firefighter to go check it to see if there was anything in there and when the lights came on and I opened up the back door to the box, Zoey was laying in there," Vincent recalled, referring to the baby he and his wife Katy have since adopted.
The infant was the first baby placed in the Safe Haven Baby Box since it was installed at the MLK First Responder Campus in West Ocala, according to Vincent, who said he has worked as a firefighter for eight years.
Safe Haven Baby Boxes, a nonprofit based in Indiana, offers temperature-controlled baby boxes at hospitals and fire stations in multiple states, letting parents legally surrender a child. When used, the nonprofits' baby boxes trigger an alarm and are set up to automatically notify emergency responders.
"A baby box is an extension of the safe haven law, and the safe haven law has been around since the year 1999, when it started in Texas. And that basically said that any parent who doesn't want or can't care for their newborn child can legally surrender their child at any designated safe haven location and walk away, no questions asked," Monica Kelsey, founder and CEO of Safe Haven Baby Boxes, told "GMA."
Currently, safe haven laws exist in all 50 states, but age limits vary as to when a newborn can be placed in a baby box, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Vincent said after he discovered baby Zoey, he started a medical examination, since he is also a trained paramedic, and called for hospital transport. Zoey was later taken to a local hospital for a mandatory observation period and Vincent said he was able to ride in the ambulance with her.
"I hand the baby off to the nurses so they can do all the stuff they do at the hospital and I pulled the doctor aside and I had asked him like, 'When's the caseworker gonna get here? Because I would like to adopt her,'" Vincent recalled.
At the suggestion of a doctor, Vincent said he left a detailed note with baby Zoey explaining that he and his wife were certified to adopt and had been trying unsuccessfully to have children for nearly a decade.
"I didn't know whether or not the doctor was going to hand my note all the way to the case manager," Vincent said. "I honestly just really thought that that was gonna be it and we weren't gonna be able to see her again."
But within a couple of days, Vincent said his wife Katy was able to bring Zoey home from the hospital. In April, the couple legally became Zoey's parents.
"It's just been a whirlwind. There's just really no way to describe it. It's been crazy. Every day, me and my wife still look at each other and just go like, 'I can't believe we have a child and I can't believe our Zoey's our child and how everything happened,'" Vincent said, adding that he's loved Zoey "since the moment me and her locked eyes that night."
The longtime first responder said he wanted to share Zoey's story publicly to send a message to Zoey's birth mother.
"It's not about me. It's not about my wife. It's not about our journey to have kids. It's not about me being a first responder. It's about this beautiful little girl who was given the chance of life, and that she's been adopted, she's loved and hopefully her birth mother sees it and recognizes that she did the right thing," Vincent said. "She doesn't have to worry anymore. Her daughter's taken care of and is loved beyond words."
"We're just so thankful that … she chose to give Zoey a life and that she chose right, for whatever reason, putting her in that box, and that she gave us a family," he added.
Vincent said today, nearly six months since Zoey was first placed in the baby box, the baby girl is growing and "making all her milestones."
"We definitely try not to take a single moment for granted because we've been waiting and praying so long for this to happen. So we're just enjoying every second, enjoying doing all the new things of her eating different foods now and stuff like that, and trying different things and just being a family," he said.
Editor's note: This was originally published on June 28, 2023.
