Abandoned but Not Alone

Those eyes, baby blues too big for such a tiny face, have haunted Coleen Reeder since they locked onto her when she found the infant abandoned in a parking lot three weeks ago.

“I just fell into them,” Reeder said. “He looked up at me and captured my soul in an instant.”

When Reeder discovered the baby Jan. 29, he was emaciated but clean. He was severely dehydrated but carefully wrapped in three blankets and placed just so in a wicker laundry basket. Someone had left him whimpering outside a Weight Watchers clinic in a busy shopping center less than 30 minutes before Reeder and others came along, but police have yet to find any witnesses. Now, while the baby recovers under the care of foster parents, police still are looking for his mother.

Their only clue was tucked neatly in the basket beside him--a note scrawled diagonally across a piece of white paper: “Please take care of my baby. I’m too sick. God Bless.”

Reeder picked up the boy and held him while police and paramedics were called. She fed him drops of milk through a straw and stroked his tiny forehead. Several women crowded around her at the clinic, startled by the child’s pathetic appearance. He looks awful, not like a baby at all, they said. What’s wrong with him, they wondered.

He resembled a tiny alien, even to Reeder, who rocked him gently and held him tightly. His face was triangular, and he had an exaggerated cleft in the middle of his forehead. His neck was bony and outstretched, his lips chapped and cracking. His eyes were opened wide, unblinking. He didn’t take them off her for a second.

“It was like he was holding me,” Reeder said. “He followed my every move.”

When paramedics finally lifted him from her arms 20 minutes later, Reeder cried.

Nurses at Children’s Hospital of Orange County quickly dubbed him “Baby Moses,” a reference to the biblical figure who also was found in a basket and taken in by strangers. They cradled him round-the-clock and cooed at him while the fluids he so desperately needed flowed into his tiny veins.

They were amazed by the way he held up through five days of needles and tests and strangers and treatments. He was half the weight that he should have been for his six or so weeks of life, and yet there he was, gazing intently at the doctors and nurses without so much as a single cry.

“He definitely spent a great deal of time in the arms of the nurses,” said Dr. James Cappon, a CHOC pediatrician who treated Baby Moses last month. “He had no trouble at all developing quite a fan club around here.”

Cappon examined the infant and immediately noted several things. The baby was alert, able to follow movement and look around. Those observations, coupled with the boy’s size and the fact that he was not yet old enough to roll over, helped Cappon estimate his age at about 6 weeks. He showed no signs of physical abuse.

Baby Moses was fed intravenously for the first 12 hours, but Cappon said it soon became clear that he could eat on his own, and the tubes were replaced with bottles. He gained nearly 3 pounds in five days.

“He was mostly just hungry, and so, so interested in eating,” Cappon said. “He improved so quickly it was almost dramatic. He looked like the Gerber baby when he left here.”

By the time Baby Moses was released Feb. 3 to the care of foster parents, Cappon had concluded something else about him, yet another clue to his mysterious background. This child, the doctor said, had been “reasonably well-cared for” in the weeks before he was abandoned. He was dehydrated but not severely malnourished--a near-empty bottle was left with him--and he was clean and warm when he was found in the basket.

But even more telling was the way Baby Moses responded to people, to being touched. He seemed to love it, Cappon said.

“Abused or neglected children often do not respond well to being held. . . . They aren’t easily comforted by that,” he said. “This baby [was] comforted nicely when he was held and talked to. He looked at you and listened. He was used to that level of intimacy.”

Why, then, would someone--presumably his mother--abandon him so desperately one night last month? Was she watching when Reeder and three other women spotted the basket and read her note? Has she checked on him since then, just another anonymous call asking about Baby Moses?

Police hoped releasing a photograph of the distinctive-looking baby would attract leads from people who recognized him, but so far none have panned out. The four tips they did receive came from people in three counties, and all shared a common theme.

“They kept thinking they knew those eyes,” La Habra Police Det. Ron Braasch said. “For some reason, a lot of people have mentioned that.”

Braasch examined hundreds of Orange County birth records dating back to December and the first part of January, when Baby Moses probably was born, but he was unable to find a match. He scoured missing persons reports on the off chance that the baby had been kidnapped.

He flashed the boy’s photograph to maternity ward nurses at dozens of hospitals and posted it on the Police Department’s Web page. He has expanded his efforts to neighboring counties.

Braasch said he has investigated two similar cases in the past, and both were solved within a few days, when the guilt-stricken mothers came forward. They were arrested on charges of child abandonment, a felony.

But this case isn’t likely to turn out that way, he said.

“It’s incredibly frustrating,” Braasch said. “We have nothing to go on.”

If his mother isn’t found, Baby Moses could be adopted within a year, officials said. In the meantime, he’ll stay at his foster home, where so far he is “progressing well,” said Rachel Davis, a social services caseworker.

The women who discovered him in the parking lot that night said they have been craving information about him ever since.

Kyra Gallick--whose car brushed against the wicker basket, causing her to climb out and investigate the noise--said she has thought about the “little guy” every day. She worries. She wonders.

“I can only hope that his story turns out to be as sweet as it did for the real Moses,” said Gallick, 22. “That baby was rescued from a basket and raised in a palace by a princess. This baby deserves no less.”

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Bonnie Hayes can be reached at (714) 966-5848. Her e-mail address is bonnie.hayes@latimes.com