She Was Abandoned as a Child... Now She Saves Abandoned Babies

On this episode of Our American Stories, Monica Kelsey took her own traumatic story and turned it into something truly beautiful.

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we returned to our American stories. Up next, you're
going to hear the story of a woman who took
her own traumatic story and turned it into something truly beautiful.
There's so many Here's Monica Kelsey, the founder and CEO
of Safe Haven Baby Boxes.

Speaker 2 (00:30):
I wasn't really told much growing up other than my
birth parents were young in love and couldn't care for me,
so they placed me for adoption. And that's what my
parents were told when they adopted me to protect me,
and so my whole life growing up, I felt like
I had this fairy tale family waiting for me. When
I turned eighteen and my birth records would be opened,
and you know, they loved me so much they placed

(00:51):
me for adoption, and I didn't realize that that was
going to be the farthest thing from the truth. I'm
going to take you back to August of nineteen seventy two,
when a young seventeen year old girl was brutally attacked
and raped and left along the side of the road,
and she pressed charges against the man who had raped her,
and he was arrested and he was charged. And then

(01:12):
when she was finally getting her life back to normal,
she finds out she's pregnant, and she was hidden for
the remainder of the pregnancy, and she gave birth in
April of nineteen seventy three and abandoned her child two
hours after that child was born, and that child was me.
I graduated high school, I joined the United States Military.

(01:35):
I spent eight years defending my country, and then got
out of the military, met the love of my life,
started a family, and then joined the fire service and
became a firefighter in a medic and having my own
kids really kind of opened me up to finding my beginnings,
finding out who I was, finding out my story. So
I started the long journey of looking for my biological mother,

(01:59):
and I actually her when I was thirty seven years old,
and that became the best in the worst day of
my life, because that is truly when I learned the
circumstances of my birth. Being seventeen and pregnant was looked
at differently back in nineteen seventy two. Your family was
looked at differently, and so she had a lot of challenges.

(02:23):
The answer to the problem of her being pregnant was
her mother set up an appointment at a back alley
abortion facility in October of nineteen seventy two, but while
standing in front of a man that was going to
take her child's life, she changed her mind. She walked
out of that facility or her mother was very angry

(02:45):
with her, and she never looked back, and I'm very
thankful for that. I spent about three years getting to
know her, and I got a call. I was on
the ambulance one night as a medic and I got
a call that she wasn't doing well. I immediately left
work and headed to the hospital, and when I arrived,

(03:08):
she was on a ventilator, fighting for her life. This
woman that was laying in front of me. The way
we dealt with it was we called each other girlfriend,
and so I kissed her on her cheek and I said,
I love you, girlfriend, You are my hero, and a
tear ran down her cheek. You know, she was there
when I took my first breath, and I was holding

(03:29):
her hand when she took her last. And how amazing
is it for christ to have allowed me to be
there for her and her weakest moment as she was
there for me and mine in nineteen seventy two when
I needed her the most to see my worth. But
getting to know her really did kind of shape me

(03:49):
because she gave me the empathy that I needed to
do what I do today. About seven months later, I
was asked if I wanted to go to a speaking
tour to caise Ape Town, South Africa. I was still
dealing with the aftermath of finding my worth and finding
my purpose that I decided to go on this speaking tour.

(04:10):
And while I was walking into this church in Cape Town,
South Africa. Now this is the only church in Cape
Town that had what they called a baby safe And
as I'm walking in and it just looked like a
mail drop, I was like, what is this and what
does it used for? And she's the woman that was
walking as sid She said, women come here at night
and they placed their children inside, and they leave their

(04:33):
children here, their infants here, so that their child's life
will go on. And then someone from the church adopts
these kids. And you know, being a Medican, a firefighter,
I always knew about the safe haven law in America
where a woman can walk into any fire station, hospital
or police station and the child to a person and
turn around and walk away and not be prosecuted. But

(04:56):
I had never seen anything like this. Before ever in America.
Today we are finding a baby every three days. And
these are newborns. These aren't one year olds, these aren't
six month old. These are thirty days old or less newborns,
some of them placentas still attached. And you know, when

(05:17):
we passed the safe Haven Law in nineteen ninety nine,
this law was passed and it was a good law.
It was something to keep babies out of dumpsters and
trash cans. But the problem with it was is no
one was doing education on it. There was no money
for people to go around the country and educate kids
fire stations, hospitals. Basically, the lawmakers made laws in all

(05:39):
fifty states and said, well, here you go, here's the law.
You're taking kids now at fire stations, and firefighters are
like what. And then you got kids in high school
they had never even heard about it because no one
was ever talking about it. So of course abandonments continued
to happen. And when I came along back in twenty fifteen,
I started looking at the statistics of the abandoned babies.

(06:02):
I started to find interest in knowing where these babies
were being left, where were they being dumped? And about
half of them were being left at the doors of
safe places. There was a baby that was left at
the door of a fire station. This baby was in
a duffel bag laid at the door of a fire station. Now,

(06:23):
why would a woman take a baby to a fire station.
There's only one reason, so this baby would be found,
this baby could be taken care of. Unfortunately, when the
firefighters finally found this baby outside their door, this baby
was dead. This mother clearly wanted something better for her child,
but she didn't want to talk to the fire guys.

(06:44):
She didn't want to go face to face with them.
She didn't want them knowing her identity. And so she
left the baby at the door of the fire station,
thinking that someone would come out. And maybe she rang
the doorbell, maybe they were asleep, Maybe she knocked on
the door and ran off. I don't know, But what
I do know is that this mother clearly wanted anonymity
and she didn't get it. And now this baby died.

(07:08):
Now do we still have babies that are being surrendered
by handing them to fire personnel and at hospitals. Yes,
and we encourage women to do that. But if they won't,
if they won't walk into a fire station or a
hospital and hand their child to a person. We better
have something set up and available and ready so that
we don't have a baby in a dumpster or a

(07:29):
trash can because she doesn't want to face someone. And
so the more I looked at the stats, I thought,
can we put these boxes in these fire stations, in
these hospitals so that these women don't lay these babies
at the doors of safe haven locations. And on the
flight back from Cape Town, South African a Delta Napkin,
as I'm dealing with the devastation of my birth mother passing,

(07:52):
it was almost like a light bulb went off and
I found my purpose. And on this plane, on a
Delta Napkin, I hand drew my version of a baby
box and then came back to the United States and
started the uphill battle of building a box and getting
people to trust that this box was a better option
than a dumpster was. And then if a mother didn't

(08:13):
want to walk into a fire station or a hospital
and hand their child to a person and talk to
them or look them in the eye, that if they
couldn't do that, then then I was going to give
them another option. I took this napkinto a builder in
Fort Wayne, Indiana, and I said, I want you to
build me a baby box. And he said, oh what,
And I said, a baby box. I'm look with these
a fire stations, I'm going to save some babies. And

(08:35):
he looked at me like I was crazy. Now I
look back and think, gosh, I probably did sound pretty crazy.
Baby box has never been in America before. And he
looks at me and he says, well, I'll build you
whatever you want for seven hundred dollars.

Speaker 1 (08:51):
And you've been listening to Monica Kelsey tell the story
of how she started Safe Haven Baby Boxes, and we
tell stories about entrepreneurs starting businesses, and my goodness, entrepreneurs
also come in all kinds of shapes and sizes, in
some form nonprofits and churches and other organizations designed not

(09:11):
to make money but to do good. And my goodness,
the good Monica Kelcey is doing. When we come back
more of her story here on our American Stories. And

(09:39):
we returned to our American Stories and to Monica Kelcey,
founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes. When we last left off,
he had just taken a sketch to a builder of
her version of a baby box that she drawn on
the back of an airplane. Napkin Let's pick up where
we last left off.

Speaker 2 (09:57):
Little did I know that was probably the easy He's
part of the entire journey was handing over money to
somebody to build me something. And two weeks later I
had a prototype in my hand, which is very basic,
and there was no electronics and it was just the
shell of a box. And I went to a legislator
and I said, hey, I want you to have passed
me a baby box bill. And he said what, And
I said, a babybox bill. I'm gonna put babyboxes and
fire stations and save babies. And again I get this

(10:20):
deer in the headlight look like because she lost her mind,
Like what did she dieking about? And the more I
told him about how many babies were being left at
the doors of safe haven locations or in dumpsters and
trash cans alongside highways, the more he understood my mission.
And in twenty fifteen, we passed the very first baby
box bill in America in the state of Indiana, and

(10:43):
then we started to install boxes the next year. So
in April of twenty sixteen, we launched our very first
baby box at my firehouse in Woodburn, Indiana. Two days later,
we launched another box in Michigan City. But launching this
organization and getting to where it is today did not
come without heartache. It didn't come without pain, it didn't

(11:03):
come without challenges. Thirty days after I launched the very
first baby Box in America, it was two o'clock in
the morning and we got called to a vehicle rollover.
Party pinned this is a high priority call for any medic,
any unit. And I jumped into the ambulance and my
driver jumped in and I'm trying to get my head

(11:24):
in the game, trying to understand, Okay, there's somebody underneath
a vehicle, probably crushed. What am I going to need
to do? What gear am I going to need to
walk into this scene with? And about halfway to the scene,
I find out that it's my son and his best friend,
and one is dead and one is alive. And as

(11:45):
a medic, you're trained for every situation, even if you'd
never think it's going to happen. I never thought I
would ever work on someone I love, and so I
arrived on scene. I didn't even grab any bags out
of the truck. I just went running and I totally
forgot what I was there for. I went into mom mode,

(12:07):
not medic mode. And as I arrived on scene, I
was the first on scene, and I seen my son
doing chest compressions on his best friend, Casey. He had
blood dripping from his face. He had blood all over
his arms. And as a mom, your first response is
to check out your son. And I kept asking him
are you okay? And he kept saying, don't worry about me.

(12:29):
I need you to save Casey. Mom, I need you
to save Casey. I worked Casey for eighteen minutes. I
put a helicopter in the air, but I could not
save him. My son was at a high school graduation
party where the homeowner bought booze, and my son decided
to get into a vehicle that he didn't known, a
jeep four by four, with his best friend on the

(12:49):
windowsill of that jeep, and they decided to do donuts
in a nineteen acre field while fifty kids were drinking
alcohol nearby at a bonfire. And we all know that
jeeps are known for flipping over. Any sober person would
know that, and those fifty kids when this jeep flipped
and landed on top Casey. These fifty kids ran over
and picked this jeep up off Casey and then got

(13:10):
in their vehicles and they took off. They thought they
were going to get in trouble, so they left a
dying kid on the ground. So when I got there,
there was only two people there, which was Casey and JJ.
After we called time of death, I walked over to
my son and I put my forehead to his forehead
and I said, Casey's gone, And the tears just started

(13:31):
a roll. You know, as a medic, this is any
medics worse fear. But as a mom, this is an
absolute nightmare. My son was placed in a police car
and taken to a hospital. My husband is the mayor
of our city, and so you can imagine the headlines
in our community. Mayor's son kills best friend and drunken accident.

(13:56):
Thirty days after we launched the very first baby box
in him America. This is happening. My son was charged
with o WI causing death, OWI with a blood alcohol
of point zero eighty five and underage consumption. You know,
I was very angry with what happened up until that
moment of that crash and the decisions he made, but

(14:19):
I couldn't be more proud of the man that stood
up and took responsibility for his actions. Afterwards, he stood
in front of a judge on sentencing day, pled guilty,
looked at Casey's family who adored him, who he adored,
apologized to them, and then looked at the judges that
I'm here to get my sentence. And he told him

(14:41):
that he stood in front of him, a broken man
that wishes every day he could take back that one
decision he made. And the judge suddenced him to four
years in the Department of Corruptions and they handcuffed him
and they took him away. And I stopped installing baby boxes.
Most people don't realize the trauma that comes with being

(15:03):
a medic and a firefighter and working on someone that
you love, but when when it's you, it's devastating. So
I took a six month leave of absence from the job,
and I stopped installing baby boxes, and I tried to
fix my family. I tried to be there for my son,
visiting him every week in prison. Two months before he

(15:26):
got out of prison, the very first baby was placed
in a safe Haven baby box in America, and I
don't think that's a coincidence. I think that's Christ's way
of saying, Monica, it's time to start putting boxes in again.
Your son is almost out. You've taken the time that
you needed, and now it's time to get up and
start moving and do your purpose, do what I've put

(15:47):
you here to do. And so a few months later,
we installed a third baby box in America. Eighteen months later,
the very first baby was saved, and five months later
the second baby. Now my son goes into schools and
talks about underage drinking and driving. I've taken what a
horrible situation was to turning it into something productive, allowing

(16:14):
Christ to use us to make something better for someone else.
And every time my son speaks in front of an audience,
I just sit back in awe of what we have accomplished.
I'm from Indiana, so that's where we started. We were
finding about two babies dead a year in our state

(16:34):
from abandonment newborn babies. We haven't found a dead baby
since we've launched baby boxes, and we've had twenty five
infants in baby boxes since we launched. These women are
getting the anonymity that they've been wanting. And we talk
to these parents, some of them before they surrender, some
of them after. Every story is different. The only thing

(16:55):
that is the same is that these parents wanted the
anonymity piece, and that's why they chose the baby box.
When the safe Haven Law was passed, it was to
keep babies out of dumpsters and trash cans. It wasn't
to force a mother to walk into a facility and
give her medical care. That's not why the safe Haven
Law was enacted. If we can give her medical care,

(17:17):
of course we want to help her, but she can
walk into a hospital at newborn cant and so the
safe Haven Law was passed to protect the newborn. And
if we think that every person that wants to surrender
is going to walk in and go face to face
with someone, we're kidding ourselves. That is why abandonments continue
to happen year after year after year in places where

(17:38):
baby boxes are not, But in every state that we
have launched baby boxes, abandonments drop. When I met my
biological mother and I started to question my worth, the
one thing that pulled me through was leaning back on
my faith. You know, finding out that I was not
only conceived in rape, but also abandoned at birth. If

(18:02):
there was a picture of an unwanted child, my picture
would be on it. And so I had to pick
up myself and find my worth. I fell back on
my faith, and that was what my parents had instilled
in me when I was growing up. Same thing with
my son's accident. I went back to my faith. I
always look at myself as not the victim in this story.

(18:25):
I look at myself as a blessing and someone that
received a gift, you know, meeting my biological mother, I
could have said, Nope, I am never telling a soul.
I am never I'm never talking about this again. I
don't want people to know that my biological father is
a rapist. I don't want people to know that I
don't know my ethnicity. I don't want people to know

(18:46):
that I was thrown away like trash. No, we all
have a story and we all have pain. And taking
those two and putting them together literally it changed the
life of someone that you may never even know. We
now have one hundred and four five active boxes in
nine different states. Women are utilizing these boxes, Women are

(19:06):
trusting us, women are trusting me, and it really does
feel empowering to know that these women are basically looking
at me saying, I know you have it from here
and I trust you. You know my birth mom's in
heaven now and I know she's looking down on me,
knowing that the child that she saved is now saving others.

(19:31):
I was blessed to have been abandoned because I wouldn't
have the life I have if I hadn't been.

Speaker 1 (19:37):
And thanks to Katrina Hine for conducting the interview with Monica,
and thanks as always to our own Madison Derricott. We
did a terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling.
Thanks also to Monica Kelsey. Her book, Blessed to Have
Been Abandoned, The Story of the Baby Box Lady is
available at Amazon or the usual suspects. To learn more
about Safe Haven Baby Boxes or to help support their mission,

(19:57):
is it shbb dot org. And that's why we love
to do faith stories here on this show how it
animates people to get through hard things. There are now
United States that have baby boxes, one hundred and forty
five boxes, saving dozens of infant's lives, all while protecting
the birth mother's anonymity. Monica Kelsey's story here on our
American Stories