OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — The Oak Ridge community will is home to Tennessee's latest Safe Haven Baby Box. City leaders gathered on June 12 to formally unveil the box, built into an Oak Ridge fire station.
With the box, people can safely and anonymously surrender newborns by putting them into the box. When it is closed, an alarm sounds inside the fire department that alerts crew members a newborn has arrived. The crew can then open the box and alert children's services, making sure it is cared for.
If a mother uses the box, she will find an orange bag full of resources.
"We want mom to know that there's medical knowledge in this booklet and medical services if she needs them," said Monica Kelsey, the founder of Safe Haven Baby Boxes. "There's also a Safe Haven registry. If she wants to write in later and give ethnicity information, medical information, and identifying information — she can do that at a later date. There's also trafficking information in some parts of the country. This is a huge problem, and we want to make sure that she has that information as well."
Oak Ridge's new baby box is at 333 Tuskegee Drive, behind Oak Ridge Fire Department's Station 3. This is the central fire station of the city.
"All of our all of our firefighters are, they're EMT paramedics," said Chief Travis of the Oak Ridge Fire Department. "So they get that training. They get pediatric hours and such. So they have to stay up on that. As far as the box, they were actually trained on how the box operates, what the Safe Haven Law means. Once a week we have to test this box. We want to make sure that it works."
The boxes are temperature-controlled and automatically lock when a baby is placed inside. They are available 24 hours per day and every day per week. Oak Ridge's box is in honor of Baby Wyatt, a newborn whose body was found in a t-shirt on the banks near Melton Hill Lake in March 2020.
Kelsey says the Oak Ridge box is currently the 236th box in the country, across 17 states.
"So we've had a total of 51 babies in boxes and 151 handoffs," said Kelsey. "And the handoffs, some of them are actually at baby box locations. We want these babies in the arms of firefighters first."
Kelsey said she's she founded the Safe Haven organization because her mother was raped, ended up pregnant and didn't want her. She said she wants to make sure mothers have a safe, legal and anonymous way to surrender their babies with the hope that no more children are unsafely abandoned.
"She gave birth in April of 1973, then abandoned her child two hours after that child was born. And that child was me. This is an option, and we want to give parents options. And we want to give parents options if they decide that this is what their option is, that the only option that they want to do, we're going to walk alongside these parents," she said.
"Baby Wyatt" was a name given by the community. His identity remains unknown and authorities previously said he had been dead for less than 24 hours when he was found.
Oak Ridge Police Chief Robin Smith said the child's identity is still a mystery.
"We've submitted DNA evidence to a state lab and to some private labs to try to identify maybe the family. We've not had any luck at this point, we are open to fresh leads," said Chief Smith. "If there's anyone out there that knows something, that would like to share information with us, we're always open to that."
He said the hope with this box, is that something like that won't happen again.
"I wish it'd been available four years ago and maybe we wouldn't be talking about Baby Wyatt now if it were," said Chief Smith. "So maybe this will help with the next Baby Wyatt."
Chief Solomon hopes this box saves lives.
"We're in the business of saving lives," said Chief Solomon. "This is a life-saving tool that a mother in a time of crisis can bring their infant to surrender, instead of having the child be placed at the footstep of a fire station or at the bay doors, they can actually have a safe place to place their baby."
A mother can surrender her unharmed newborn to designated facilities within two weeks of birth without fear of being prosecuted under the Safe Haven Law. The Safe Haven Baby Box allows the mother to do this anonymously.
Kelsey said thanks to a generous state donor, there is money available to cover the cost of any Tennessee fire station or hospital that would like a baby box installed. She said people should contact the organization if interested.