It Was Joyous Noel for Baby’s Rescuers

The staff at Sharp Memorial Hospital called the newborn infant Noel.

Maybe that was because her survival was miraculous enough to fit in with the story of the first Noel.

The story of this Noel began before 8 a.m. Sunday as Dinh Van Nguyen was scavenging in East San Diego.

As he searched for bottles and cans in an alley in the 4400 block of 50th Street, he was startled to hear the frail cry of a baby.

Dinh traced the sound to a trash Dumpster where he found the newborn in a plastic bag. He ran to a nearby store and insisted that the manager, Adnan Ali, follow him.

“His English was not very good, and I didn’t understand what he was talking about,” Ali said. “He just kept saying, ‘Baby crying, baby crying, baby, baby.”

Ali went with Dinh. “Before I got to the Dumpster I heard something like a baby crying. I opened a garbage bag . . . I saw that a baby was there, with blood all over her face, crying.”

Ali ran back to the street where a passer-by that he stopped luckily happened to be a retired nurse. Ali then dashed to his store and got a blanket for the child.

“Her skin was blue-blue, especially her fingers,” Ali said. “We started to give her a massage, because she was very cold,” before the ambulance arrived, he added.

“I was crying, and it was very sad,” Ali said.

Police Sgt. Micki Farrell said that when Dinh and Ali found the child, the placenta and umbilical cord were still attached and her breathing was very shallow.

“We were very fortunate to find the baby alive,” Farrell said.

The infant, which weighed 7 pounds 3 ounces, was reportedly doing well at the hospital Sunday night.