WTOC, Savannah, Georgia, news, weather and sports | A Look Back--Savannah's Baby Grace
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Baby Grace in 2002: from WTOC file video.
SAVANNAH, GA--In January 2002, a baby was abandoned by its mother in Savannah. Many in the community know her as Baby Grace.
Ronald Sheppard, a sanitation worker for Atlantic Waste, found her in a Dumpster behind Backus Cadillac.
For her protection, very little has ever been released about Baby Grace. She will turn 6-years-old this January. She was adopted a few months after she was found and now lives in northern Georgia.
It was a cold morning, around 4am when Sheppard found Baby Grace. She was lying on some Styrofoam in the Dumpster. She was wrapped in a towel, her umbilical cord was still attached.
Sheppard was getting ready to empty the Dumpster into his trash truck, but something stopped him.
That morning Sheppard described what happened next. "I seen something moving in the Dumpster. I looked at and seen a little hand looked like it popped out of nowhere," he said. "It was a little child and I stopped. I was just this close to dumping that thing."
Sheppard still works at Atlantic Waste. One of his co-workers said today that Sheppard still does not like to talk about that experience.
Paramedics rushed Baby Grace to the hospital. Nurse manager Debbie O'Connor was on duty in the emergency department at Memorial Health that morning. "She was crying, cold," she recalled.
She was precious baby O'Conner will never forget.
"The staff of course fell in love with Baby Grace and everybody on duty wanted to take Baby Grace home with them," she said. "But she needed a little more medical attention than some of the babies do."
Baby Grace impacted many lives and she galvanized Georgia's lawmakers into taking action to try and prevent this from happening again. In May 2002, former Governor Roy Barnes signed the Safe Place for Newborns Act.
Hospitals and places that normally delivery babies are the only safe havens for abandoned newborns. The mother will not face criminal charges if she, "leaves her newborn child in the physical custody of an employee, agent, or member of the staff of a medical facility who is on duty....and the mother shows proof of her identity."
Police would have arrested Baby Grace's mother for leaving her for dead in that Dumpster, but they never found out who she is.
Reported by: Michelle Paynter, mpaynter@wtoc.com
