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'Who could leave a baby like this?'
Newborn baby found at doorstep to St. Mark’s
By Joyce Coronel, news@catholicsun.org
August. 21, 2008
Ana Arochi was walking to work at 7 a.m. July 31 when she spotted an infant in a car seat on the ground near the front door of St. Mark Parish. The baby was alone.
“I was curious when I saw the car seat. My first impression was that maybe she was dead and that someone had left her,” the preschool teacher said in Spanish. “I didn’t want to touch her and maybe involve myself in problems.”
Arochi, who is also a catechist at St. Mark’s, instead knocked on the church door for help, but the parish office had not yet opened. She then managed to track down the groundskeeper who was working behind the church, located near Van Buren and 30th Street in central Phoenix.
“The groundskeeper waited with the baby while I went to the school for help,” Arochi said. Just east of the parish property is Wilson Primary School, where Arochi has worked for 10 years.
“I found the social worker and she called 911. Then I went back to the church to take care of the baby.”
Arochi said the baby was dressed in a pink outfit and wrapped in a blue towel. No bottles or any other items were left along with the infant. She said she was shocked by the situation and worried about the baby’s safety.
Modest homes and apartment complexes dot the inner-city, working-class neighborhood where graffiti mars some walls. It’s not unusual to see the homeless wheeling shopping carts loaded with empty aluminum cans past nearby adult businesses. Arochi said the area also has its share of drug addicts and criminals. Looped barbed wire sit atop the walls of a business just south of the parish.
“I have three children and at first I thought, ‘Who could leave a baby like this?’” she said. “But then I put myself in her shoes and I think something major must have happened to her.”
Baby update
The baby, a newborn girl whom officials say was less than 24 hours old, was transferred to Maricopa County Medical Center for observation.
The baby was discharged after 48 hours and is in the custody of Child Protective Services.
Since Arizona passed the Safe Haven law in 2001, 13 babies have been abandoned at designated facilities. Babies, who must be under 72 hours old, may be left at hospitals, with firefighters or EMTs on duty, child welfare agencies, licensed adoption agencies or a church. Similar laws have been passed in 47 states as well as Puerto Rico.
Calls to various parishes throughout the Diocese of Phoenix failed to turn up other cases of babies being left at Catholic churches, however.
Mike Phelan, director of the Office of Marriage and Respect Life Issues for the Phoenix Diocese, said he hadn’t heard of any other babies being dropped off at parish facilities. “It’s a good pro-life start though,” he said of the law.
The day Arochi discovered the abandoned infant, firefighters responded within in minutes of the 911 call.
So how prepared is a Catholic church to deal with an abandoned baby?
“I guess we would do as much as we can do. It’s not one of our ministries, but we’re as well prepared as anyone else, I guess,” a St. Mark’s employee said, adding that the office has received numerous calls from people wanting to adopt the baby.
The mother who abandoned the infant, however, has three months to resurface and reassert her custody. St. Mark’s has no connection whatsoever to the possible future adoption of the baby.
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