Sheriff’s Officials Seek Mother of Abandoned Baby

A woman who walked outside to grab a newspaper early Friday heard whimpering near some juniper bushes and was startled to find a baby boy tucked inside a cardboard box.

“I opened it and saw some clothing and said, ‘Oh my God, it’s a baby,’ ” Rosemarie Page, 63, said. “He was an extremely clean and neat baby, a very beautiful baby.”

Authorities are seeking the public’s help in finding the mother of the newborn, who was in good health and appeared to be less than a day old, Sheriff’s Lt. Tom Garner said.

The child was the fourth baby abandoned in Orange County since January. One other infant was alive, and two were dead.

“This is very unusual,” said Larry Leaman, the director of the county Social Services Agency. “Let’s hope it’s a coincidence and not the start of a trend.”

Page, who lives on Whitney Drive in an unincorporated area near Tustin, said she walked out of her house at about 7 a.m. and heard crying. She spotted a small cardboard box.

Inside, she said she found a boy with straight black hair and brown eyes peering from a bundle of adult-size fleece clothing. The infant was tucked between a pair of white sweat pants lining the unmarked box, and a gray sweat jacket on top of the baby, she said.

He was clothed in a white sleeper and wearing a disposable diaper with decorations, she said.

“He looked like a very well-cared-for newborn,” Page said.

She said she carried the box inside her home while a friend called 911. Paramedics quickly arrived and took the baby to Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, where he was being examined and cared for Friday.

The baby is Latino and probably was born about 9 p.m. Thursday, Garner said.

The Social Services Agency will find a home for the boy while authorities search for the mother.

If no one claims him, the baby will become one of the 250 children in the county available for adoption.

Leaman emphasized Friday that there are numerous services available for new parents unable to care for a child.

“To any parent or caretaker of a child who feels overwhelmed and can’t deal with the the role of parenting, there are legal and permissible ways . . . to give their child up for adoption,” Leaman said. “There is really no need to do the ‘baby-on-the-doorstep’ routine and put the child at risk.”

He said the county has no trouble finding adoptive parents for newborns, but faces a chronic shortage of people willing to care for older children.

The other case of an abandoned baby found alive in Orange County this year involved a healthy newborn girl. Passersby found her earlier this month in the bed of a truck parked in Anaheim.

Last weekend, a dead baby was dumped into a trash bin behind a Santa Ana medical clinic. In January, the dead 1- to 2-month-old girl was found in an Anaheim business complex.

Anyone with information about the boy found Friday is asked to call Sheriff’s Investigator Victoria Coonradt at (714) 647-7419 or the watch commander after hours at (714) 834-6490.